Haystack redux

[Jim Youll]

On Sep 15, 2010, at 6:16 AM, Jacob Appelbaum wrote:

> An interesting unintended consequence of the original media storm is
> that no one in the media enjoys being played; it seems that now most of
> the original players are lining up to ask hard questions. It may be too
> little and too late, frankly. I suppose it's better than nothing but it
> sure is a great lesson in popular media journalism failures.


On the contrary, because life is not a series of disconnected events, this is a great success for the safety of civilians, and for media coverage, going forward:

	- people who care about the lives of others, and who worry about technologies based in "trust" now are more aware of one another than ever before
	- the business of taking well-intentioned but defective things apart is out of the shadows and in a very favorable spotlight
	- The media have a whole new dimension of drama to add to their coverage of high tech wonders: "... but does it really work?"

Journalism is self-correcting, as you note... provided a feedback channel exists and can be maintained long enough for the corrections to hold... as happened here.

- jim

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