Comments on: Why Bother Researching Anything, Anyway

By: Joshua Foust

Joshua Foust — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 04:47:55 +0000

someguy, I’ll be perfectly honest and say I’ve been really grumpy the last few weeks as all these people have just been discovering Georgia’s problems and the Caucasus and Russia expansionism as if it’s something new. It’s not — none of this is a surprise to anyone, and it’s maddening to see these ignorant half-assed journalists getting these paid trips to write press releases about these countries.

That’s all it is.

By: someguy

someguy — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 01:11:47 +0000

I’ve been fascinated by this blog for a long time, but lately it seems most of the posts have to do with how smart you are and how dumb everyone else is that write on int’l affairs. Can we dial down the bitterness a tad? It’s rather offputting. Just a suggestion. As I said, I have respect for this blog and would like to continue reading interesting things here, but not if it’s going to become a whinefest.

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:59:06 +0000

Not that any of this deserves the amount of attention we’re giving it, but why is the Azerbaijan government inviting only right-wing journalists on its junkets? What does that say about the message they’re trying to get out?

By: jb

jb — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:41:07 +0000

Jesus. That makes Tom Friedman’s supposed cab driver conversations look relatively coherent and well put together.

Why would anyone ever try to report on Azerbaijan without knowing anything about Nagorno-Karabakh? Seems like an awful waste of time to me.

By: Richard

Richard — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:41:14 +0000

Brietbart, Totten and several other American journalists were brought to Baku by the Azeri Diplomatic Academy in a trip paid for by the Azeri government and organized by Jason Epstein who is a long-time lobbyist for the Turkish and Azeri governments. It was a journalistic junket.

One must remain skeptical about the result of such paid and chaperoned trips. Brietbart’s repeating of Azeri allegations that Russian planes based in Armenia, bombed Georgia is a case in point. Armenia firmly denied it and the government of Georgia backed Armenia up.

By: Robert

Robert — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:23:35 +0000

In his defense, Totten does not write like that other idiot at all, who seemed to be more interested in exposing his complete lack of knowledge and absence of research than writing anything even remotely interesting. I read that article a few days ago and was pretty amazed at Breitbart’s sad performance, never mind his repeated mentions of how knows (maybe it’s a cry for help?). If you look at Totten’s second paragraph however, realize you could interpret what he says there in different ways.

By: David Gerard

David Gerard — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 06:29:12 +0000

Journalists are lazy, every journalist I’ve ever spoken to about Wikipedia uses it as their universal background source, the world continues as ever Mostly they try to do a decent job, but not that hard. OTOH, the Washington Times would presumably pay well enough to write something worth having been written.

By: Bryan McMahon

Bryan McMahon — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 05:59:06 +0000

That’s not journalism, it’s laziness and disrespect for my country. The details of his description can really represent many of the major cities and capitals of ex-Soviet Union countries. While I don’t really respect the Washington Post anyways, I hope he doesn’t come back unless he really wants to find out about our city. Otherwise he can simply continue on with his assumption that if he’s Wiki’d the country, he’s been there and has enough experience to write an article on it (I know that may seem like a stretch of what he did, but appears he learned nothing in our city so he might as well have only done that).

By: Fabius Maximus

Fabius Maximus — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 05:45:48 +0000

Wonderful news, the best I have heard about the fourth estate in years! That they admit ignorance while writing is fantastic progress. Perhaps soon they will learn to consult experts *before* writing, instead of relying on generic geopol gurus and fellow reporters.