Why we don’t trust the media

People joke about the fact that lawyer’s “briefs” are so long.  It is a good joke, but it misses the whole point of a true legal brief, which is to consolidate vast amounts of information culled from disparate sources into a single, coherent, lucid document.  It’s very difficult to do this well.

Of course, lawyers are not the only ones who have the task of consolidating vast amounts of information from varying sources and distilling them into a lucid whole.  Scholars can do that too.  In that regard, I’d like to recommend, just about as highly as I can, the work of Stephen D. Cooper, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Marshall University.

Cooper has written what can only be described as a “brief” that carefully details the fauxtography scandals that bloggers unearthed during the Israeli/Hezbollah war in 2006.  Cooper’s work is a gem of good scholarship:  well organized, free of cant, carefully sourced, and easy to understand.  It should be read by anyone who wonders why conservatives in the blogosphere and friends of Israel are deeply suspicious of the mainstream media.

Hat tip:  LGF