Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Stick to the facts, Fox News!

Obama acceptance speech moved indoors

This story should be pretty boring.  The chance of inclement weather, specifically isolated thunderstorms, presented a risk to attendees of the Democratic National Convention who would be watching the event outside, in the Bank of America Stadium.  To mitigate the risk, convention planners moved the event inside.  Unfortunately, this had the effect of shrinking the seat availability from 65,000 to 20,000, and so tens of thousands of supporters holding community credentials to the event on September 6, this humble blogger included, found themselves unable to attend.  The President has promised to hold a conference call with them on Thursday, and cancelled credential holders will be invited to other future events involving the President.  Those are the facts.

Never one to miss out on a good conspiracy hypothesis, Fox News is reporting that "one Democratic official" reported that the DNC was having trouble filling seats, and that "one source said some Democrats had been hoping it would also serve as a handy solution to the potential attendance problem at the stadium." 

"One source" said "some Democrats?"  Are you kidding me?  This is like when your idiot brother walks up to you and says, "Some people say that cell phones cause brain cancer."  The appeal to "some people" is an attempt to lend credibility to a myth.  In this case, your idiot brother is Fox News, and the appeal to authority is "some people," and this, of course, is also what the military calls single-source intelligence - a report from a single person - the least reliable intelligence of all.



Carl Sagan said famously, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."  I'm not sure how extraordinary Fox News' claim here is,  but any news organization ought not make claims without evidence.  If you have something to say, then by all means say it, but by all means support it, as well.  Until and unless Fox News comes up with some actual numbers or actual evidence, this story is no more salacious or complicated as described in the first paragraph. 

So, I'm looking forward to my conference call with President Obama.  It may not be as cool as going to the convention, but when's the last time you've been able to tell someone - "hey, I'll have to call you back.  I have a conference call in a few minutes - with President Obama!" 

1 comment:

  1. Hi there! Are you an often online visitor or maybe you are for face to face communication?

    ReplyDelete