08.20.13
Laundering the stupid
Yesterday’s bit on the National Journal ricin plot news that wasn’t news, because nincompoops on the staff at the magazine’s Global Security Newswire staff had mistakenly resurrected a 2011 article from the NYTimes, has been laundered.
Once nonsense is passed through an alleged source of authority, it can spread everywhere.
Take this snapshot, from Yahoo’s News Service:
To reiterate: There is no ricin bomb plot. This is trash, a mistake, taken from a New York Times piece that was clearly dated 2011.
Makes no difference, though. Just another small example of how degraded mainstream journalism is. Between firings, downsizing of operations, and a conversion to a model that values only page views and eyeballs, it’s not surprising. But it is still dismaying.
With regards to any alleged ricin bomb plot? It was going no place in 2011. Nothing has changed.
DD’s Law, you see:
The probability that any predicted national security catastrophe, or doomsday scenario, will occur is inversely proportional to its appearance in entertainments, movies, television dramas and series, novels, non-fiction books, magazines and news.