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Maybe We're All A Little Too Desperate These Days For A Simple Formula To Explain How Our Safe World Came Unhinged. That, As Much As Anything, May Explain One Of The More Enduring Conspiracy Theories Of The Moment, The Notion That We Are About To Send A Quarter Of A Million American Soldiers To War For The Sake Of Israel.

-Bill Keller

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Maybe We're All A

Bill Keller

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Maybe We're All A Little Too Desperate These Days For A Simple Formula To Explain How Our Safe World Came Unhinged. That, As Much As Anything, May Explain One Of The More Enduring Conspiracy Theories Of The Moment, The Notion That We Are About To Send A Quarter Of A Million American Soldiers To War For The Sake Of Israel.

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Casual Reliance On Unnamed Sources...corrodes Our Credibility And, In Cases That Are Rare But Not Rare Enough, May Abet Journalistic Malpractice.

I Don't Think Fairness Means That You Give Equal Time To Every Point Of View No Matter How Marginal. You Weigh The Sides, You Do Some Truth-testing, You Apply Judgment To Them.

You Don't Want To Go Around Willy-nilly Suing News Organizations. That's Probably Self-defeating.

Every Technology, Including The Printing Press, Comes At Some Price.

Beating Up On The So-called Elite Media Has A Nice Populist Ring To It.

My Dad Was An Engineer, And He Became The Ceo Of Chevron. His Was An Engineer's Mind-set: Everything's Kind Of A Problem How Do You Approach The Problem?

There Is Something Decidedly Faux About The Camaraderie Of Facebook, Something Illusory About The Connectedness Of Twitter.

The Queen Of Aggregation Is, Of Course, Arianna Huffington, Who Has Discovered That If You Take Celebrity Gossip, Adorable Kitten Videos, Posts From Unpaid Bloggers And News Reports From Other Publications, Array Them On Your Website And Add A Left-wing Soundtrack, Millions Of People Will Come.

Celebrity Gossip

Liberation Movements - Operating Surreptitiously And Conspiratorially - Thrive On Discipline And Suspicion, And Punish Deviation Or Dissent.

One Of The Reasons That I'm A Lurker On Twitter Is That Every Time I Tweet An Idea, I Feel Like I'm Delivering Something To The Competition That I Ought To Be Giving To A Reporter Here.

Everything Is Accessible To Everyone All The Time, And I Think There Are Wondrous Things To Treasure With What The Internet Has Made Available To Journalists. But I Think It's Also Had Some Effects That Are Less Pleasant. It Has Chipped Away At A Sense Of Privacy And Secrecy.

Anyone With An Internet Service Provider Can Be A Pundit Or Whatever They Want.

My View Of Social Media Is That It Is A Set Of Tools, Not A Religion.

Twitter And Facebook Are Brilliant- Tools, The Journalistic Uses Of Which Are Still Being Plumbed. They Are Great For Disseminating Interesting Material. They Are Useful For Gathering Information, Including From Places That Are Inaccessible.

I Think There's A Misconception That I'm Opposed To Social Media.

I Make A Joke That I'm The Internet Curmudgeon, But 'wary' Is A Good Way To Put It.

Maybe We're All A Little Too Desperate These Days For A Simple Formula To Explain How Our Safe World Came Unhinged. That, As Much As Anything, May Explain One Of The More Enduring Conspiracy Theories Of The Moment, The Notion That We Are About To Send A Quarter Of A Million American Soldiers To War For The Sake Of Israel.

It's A Considerable Source Of Tragedy In The World That People Stay In Powerful Jobs Long Past The Point Where They're A Spent Force.

Choosing My Favorite Moment In Journalism Would Be Like Picking A Favorite Among My Children. I Can't Pick One Favorite.

I Do Care If Religious Doctrine Becomes An Excuse To Exclude My Fellow Citizens From The Rights And Protections Our Country Promises.

The Curse Of A Journalist Is That He Always Has More Questions Than Answers.

My Feeling About The Internet Or Anything Else Is That The More It Tends To Become A Cult, The More I Want To Call It Into Question.

I'm A Capricorn, Actually.

Being An Editor Has Been A Source Of Great Satisfaction, But Writing Is The Thing I Truly Love.

A Vote For Mitt Romney Is A Vote For Satan.

I May Be The Old-media Id, But I Think I May Be Entitled To Some Credit For Being A New-media Pioneer.

Most Recently, The President's Reluctance To Offend Senator Rick Santorum - A Catholic Theocrat Who Believes That States Should Have The Power To Arrest Gay Lovers In Their Bedrooms, Or Even To Criminalize Couples Who Use Contraceptives - Was An Occasion To Wonder What, Exactly, Mr. Bush Was Born-again Into.

One Of The Most Important Disciplines In Journalism Is To Challenge Your Working Premises.

Julian Assange, The Wikileaks Founder, Has On Several Occasions Talked About Transparency As An Absolute Principle. I Don't Personally Believe That.

I Think There's Been A Decline In The Public's Access To What's Being Done With Their Tax Dollars, What's Being Done In Their Name. I Hope That That Will Be Repaired.

Liberation Movements - Prizing Ends Over Means - Are Not Always Particular About Their Friends Or Scrupulous About Their Transactions.

I Don't Think Anyone At Fox Believes They Are Producing Even-handed, Impartial Coverage.

I'm Convinced That The Most Important Division In Human Affairs Is Probably Not The One Between Left And Right, Liberal And Conservative. It's The One Between Zealotry And Understanding, Between Absolute Conviction And Compromise, Between Preachers And Politicians.

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Whether Or Not Twitter Makes You Stupid, It Certainly Makes Some Smart People Sound Stupid.

The Most Obvious Drawback Of Social Media Is That They Are Aggressive Distractions.

Every Time My Tweetdeck Shoots A New Tweet To My Desktop, I Experience A Little Dopamine Spritz That Takes Me Away From... From... Wait, What Was I Saying?

Buying An Aggregator And Calling It A Content Play Is A Little Like A Company's Announcing Plans To Improve Its Cash Position By Hiring A Counterfeiter.

I Don't Have Dating Tips.

I Think Twitter Is A Fabulous Tool. Crowd-sourcing By Twitter Is Useful In Getting Early Warnings.

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