{"id":12483,"date":"2016-01-20T16:19:10","date_gmt":"2016-01-20T16:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=12483"},"modified":"2016-01-20T16:19:10","modified_gmt":"2016-01-20T16:19:10","slug":"internet-proves-um-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=12483","title":{"rendered":"Internet proves, um, wrong!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Back in the day — when I toiled at a daily newspaper —\u00a0I actually had the following exchange with a reader of the paper who had submitted a letter to the editor and asked me to publish it.<\/p>\n

Me:<\/strong> Are you sure about your facts here? This stuff looks kind of fishy to me.<\/p>\n

Reader<\/strong>: Of course I’m sure. It’s the truth. I got it on the Internet.<\/p>\n

Suffice to say we didn’t publish the individual’s letter.<\/p>\n

The Internet is a lot of things. The purveyor of the whole truth all the time, though, is not one of them.<\/p>\n

Breitbart.com posted a story that has Amarillo abuzz with concern. It describes the city as a haven for Middle East refugees and that the city is being “overrun” by them.<\/p>\n

Not so, says Mayor Paul Harpole. <\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve got to give Amarillo Globe-News reporter Kevin Welch huge props for exposing this nonsense.<\/p>\n

Harpole said the city is working to control all immigrants, which include refugees. The issue isn’t limited to just those fleeing bloodshed and misery in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

But according to the Welch’s story, Brietbart.com and some other conservative websites are disseminating bogus “information” about the state of affairs in little ol’ Amarillo, Texas.<\/p>\n

It’s been a given for years that Amarillo has been a magnet of sorts for immigrants. Community faith-based and secular organizations have done a lot over the years to welcome immigrants, as Welch reported.<\/p>\n

The city, though, isn’t being swarmed, swamped and swallowed up by hordes of refugees, as some Internet sites have said.<\/p>\n

The fallacy of this kind of alleged “reporting” contains several lessons.<\/p>\n

One of them ought to become required of all who consume news and commentary. It is that the Internet is a source for fiction<\/em> far more frequently than it is a source for fact.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

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Back in the day — when I toiled at a daily newspaper —\u00a0I actually had the following exchange with a reader of the paper who had submitted a letter to the editor and asked me to publish it. Me: Are you sure about your facts here? This stuff looks kind of fishy to me. Reader: … Continue reading Internet proves, um, wrong!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[179,309,2293,3875],"class_list":["post-12483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-media-news","tag-agn-media","tag-amarillo-globe-news","tag-internet","tag-refugees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12483"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12486,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12483\/revisions\/12486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}