I'd say one of my better blogging qualities is that my bullshit detector and my "too good (or too bad) to be true" detector work pretty well. I've linked uncritically to a few stupid things over the years, but on the whole my record's pretty good.
I think I do pretty well with this, too. My powers of analysis may be average (I thought Dean would be the Dem nominee; I thought Kerry might crush Bush) but with individual events I usually can tell a hawk from a handsaw. The only time I can remember tripping up was when I credited a story Dave Neiwert put up about a gay-bashing. Usually the stories I call bullshit on are slanted toward the right, but not exclusively so, such as the one about American soldiers bulldozing Iraqi farmers' trees while playing jazz music over loudspeakers. I don't know if blogs will actually ever play a positive role in analyzing news, but if there is anything to the "wisdom of crowds"-type argument, then distributed reaction to individual events in which we each decide whether a story sounds plausible or not and then pool the results is where you'd see the benefit.
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