Rob, Rambling - A lot of things interest me...

David Aaronovitch at The Times Online tries to track down the origin of this oft-quoted statistic about Britain’s CCTV society, which is used to ramp up the fear factor regarding our civil liberties and freedoms.

Turns out the quote is from a hypothetical person on a hypothetical day, during which he basically does every single thing that it is possible to do in London, without any regard to whether this hypothesis is actually feasible.

Unfortunately, I’m pretty certain that Aaronovitch’s investigation is going to receive a minuscule amount of coverage compared to the 300 times a day “statistic”. It’s a shame, as his investigation is a thorough debunking.

Sarah Palin, expressing her expert opinion on polar bears.

thedailywhat

Am I the only one who read this article and couldn’t find the quote? then I search on other links and couldn’t find it. Now don’t get me wrong, Palin hurts my head more then Carrot Top, but one thing I cant stand is shit like this. Maybe someone wanted to start up an issue knowing quite well that people don’t want to read up on most articles. Or maybe not. But this proves how strong one sentence can be. One sentence and that’s how some people get their information. That’s what some people vote on: One sentence. And when people have their opinions because of media ‘blurp’ don’t you think that’s continuing with America’s ignorance? If someone could find me a link to the direct quote I would greatly appreciate it.

malty

I did a little bit of sleuthing on this quote after malty pointed out that the linked article no longer contains it. In the comments there, the Telegraph is getting slated for apparently removing the quote from the current version of a story originally published yesterday. Google’s cache hasn’t captured the page yet, but the words are quoted below the page title when searching.

I googled the quote in question, and most of the results are recent, from the last 24 hours.

But an article from the Guardian, dated September 17th also contained the quote. They attributed it to an NY Times editorial that Governor Palin wrote a few months ago, in direct quote form.

Searching on nytimes.com for the exact quote doesn’t bring up any results at all. But searching for a few keywords (magnificent, cuddly, white, bears) does find this article, an Op-Ed by Palin, published on 05th January of this year.

The subject matter of the piece is indeed polar bears, and it calls for them to remain off of the US endangered species list. Palin argues that there is insufficient evidence pointing to the endangerment of the polar bear habitat and population, and so they should not be added to the list.

But the quote in question is nowhere to be found. It is, at best, a very, very loose paraphrasing of her argument, and at worst is a total fabrication. Nowhere does she say that they will adapt to living on land. She does use the word “cuddly” in her intro, but this is a reference to the animated versions we see on TV.

For this quote to have been created and now used against her is a real pity. It shows that the media is willing to do anything to put across the image that they have chosen to portray someone as, even to go so far as lying.

If this “misquote” (or similar) was being attributed to Obama, there would be blue murder screamed by everyone. But, because it’s Palin, and in general us liberals think she’s a bit stupid anyway, we’re perpetuating the lie.

It’s at times like these that I feel sorry for anyone in the eye of the media, especially a media which tends to disagree with them.