Too much information running through my head

Anonymous Liberal, posting on Glenn Greenwald's blog nailed this on the head. It is becoming a world with too many unfiltered sources of news and no mediators. There can be no debate when the very facts are in dispute. If someone, anyone, with credibility could step up and call out some of the b.s., maybe we could at least regain some semblance of honest debate.

But who could do that. There was a time the major newspapers and the network news had that responsibility but through dwindling market-share, corporate pressure and credibility destroying accusations of bias, their day is done.

The blogs can cover their own corner of the infosphere, but their reach is limited by their readership (who usually already agrees with most everything they say anyway) and their own potential agendas. For the most part, they contribute to the noise far more than they clean it up.

As someone who reads alot of information on blogs, online newspapers and journals (not to mention watching the Daily Show religiously), I would like to think I have a good grasp of the facts on many issues. But still, I always have that gnawing in the back of my mind that maybe, just maybe, on this one tidbit of an issue or another, Rush/Hannity/Malkin/O'Reilly has the facts right and I am wrong. That is a dreadful feeling.

I think one place the right often beats the left in debate is their unshaking confidence in their 'facts' against which no evidence stands a chance. The left is usually much more willing to entertain the thought that the other side might be right occasionally or to concede this little point or that. That is the kiss of death in public debate. We equivacate far too much. I am the worst about this (well actually Kerry is the worst) but it is a central part of who we are as thinking liberals and human beings.

So, once again, I see the problem. I understand the problem. I have no answers.