[iwar] Historical posting
From: Fred Cohen
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Date: Mon, Jan 1, 1999
From: Fred Cohen
Reply-To: iwar@egroups.com
Subject: [iwar] Historical posting
At 06:34 AM 10/16/1999 -0700, Fred Cohen wrote:
>[re Jane's and Slashdot.org] The criticism led the editors to dump
>the original and publish the feedback itself. The episode has sparked
>speculation about a new collective journalism, wherein communities
>produce more accurate and less biased stories. We liken such practice
>more to mob rule than democratic reporting. Good reporters use
>communities as sources and don't get the stuff wrong in the first
>place.
"Democratic reporting" would be about as laudable as "democratic
dentistry," but I don't think that was to be implied either. I wouldn't be
so quick to dismiss the concept of feedback a la the Slashdot experiment.
Lots of good reporters, and good intelligence analysts, are working under
the gun; even the best get lots of things wrong, if only because they end
up relying on experts who are themselves fallible, or get accurate answers
to questions about trees, and miss the forest issue lurking behind them.
When I was an intelligence analyst (until 1993), there were inadequate
means to engage in vigorous debate on analytic claims, even within the CIA,
let alone across the whole of the classified community (and much less
across the community of experts both within and without the government)...
it would have been intriguing to have been able to tie my own analysis into
all of the appropriate places in others' assessments, and to hang a link
off any issue area where I'd like to be contacted in the event of
questions, to join in the debate.
In this particular case, the original Jane's analysis looked all too
familiar... weak and waffling analysis; the sort of thing you'd see
produced by a single analyst navel-gazing for a month or so, and which
would have kept some mid-level policymaker happy. Taking it apart wasn't
too much of a challenge.
Ross
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