Hinterland Diary

Beware the 'rhetoric of relativism' . . .

If there is no objective truth, but only subjective truth (hence your five-car pile-up analogy) -- then what difference does it make if someone was a reporter or not? I am able to state subjective truth at a moment's notice -- it's always true for me!

A reader on a column about the decline of American newspapers by the late Molly Ivins. This comment takes issue with Ivins' assertion that bloggers are no replacement for what traditional journalistic organizations do. She wrote:

Bloggers are not news-gatherers, but opinion-mongers. I have long argued that no one should be allowed to write opinion without spending years as a reporter -- nothing like interviewing all four eyewitnesses to an automobile accident and then trying to write an accurate account of what happened.