That’s such a good post, upchuck.
I do things a bit differently, but we’re thinking alike nonetheless. I go to FR and check news. Sometimes in the background I have fox news running (I prefer fox business, actually).
I use Free Republic to check the accuracy of anything that might get through from Fox. Bet they wouldn’t like to hear that. It’s truly amazing, though, when you get a hundred people talking on a thread how much detail and background they remember that puts news items in a much more accurate framework.
Your comment reminds me of the famous line from The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary, a then-groundbreaking 1997 essay touting the benefits of open source computing as Linux began to roll out. Instead of relying solely on a closed system of programmers, open source would allow a global array of users to make rapid improvements:
[Eric S.] Raymond's proposition [is] that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" (which he terms Linus's Law): the more widely available the source code is for public testing, scrutiny, and experimentation, the more rapidly all forms of bugs will be discovered."
The same principle that applied to driving the bugs out of computer programs seems to apply here, as well, for in-depth news analysis. The comments on this site are a great way to drive inaccuracies out of the usual biased reportage.