From: perry@imsi.com (Perry E. Metzger)
Date: Sat, 31 Dec 94 09:39:19 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: remarkably bad media
Message-ID: <9412311739.AA09311@webster.imsi.com>
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A remarkably bad article by Peter H. Lewis in today's Times -- front
page, actually -- on anonymity on the net. He manages to confuse the
"Microsoft aquires Church" spoof with problems from anonymity -- in
fact, he opens his article by apparently chalking up the whole episode
to anonymity rather than complete stupidity on the part of anyone
believing an obvious spoof. (The original "AP" article was not
anonymous -- someone just posted a satirical message to the net. The
connection with anonymity is so tenuous as to be nonexistant.)

Things get rapidly worse. Just to list some of the problems, he calls
digital cash a way for people to open swiss bank accounts, confuses
the case of that kid at MIT who was running pirate boards with a case
of anonymity, spreads lots of FUD, gets lots of quotes from some
alarmist professor no one has ever heard of, makes a hash of
explaining why anonymous remailers are useful (and doesn't understand
that forgery and anonymity are sort of inherent in the fabric of the
net), makes a hash of explaining digital signatures, etc. Truly one of
the worst articles I've ever seen in the New York Times on any topic
of any sort -- and given the Times, thats an amazing level to have
fallen to.

The man seems devoid of even a basic understanding of journalism -- as
one example, journalists are supposed to interview the people they are
discussing to get comment (this is nearly the first rule), but he
never bothered to interview a single remailer operator, it seems, even
though he mentions Julf by name. Maybe sending some email to Julf
would have been too much effort, or maybe it would have made the story
less sensationalistic if he'd bothered to be balanced. He didn't seem
to check any of his facts, either (another rule), and the whole thing
reads like an editorial instead of an objective piece of reporting.

I really wonder if Lewis actually lives and works on the internet, or
if he's truly the amateur he seems to be. He comes of as not
understanding the basic mechanics of how things operate day to day
that even a non-technical person would understand.

I would complain somehow to the Times, but I suspect that it would be
impossible to convey properly even the rules of simple journalism that
he broke, even ignoring all the technological misunderstandigs. Sadly,
the editors would have no reason to listen to me, a random guy they'd
never heard of.

Another step in the slow disintegration of a once proud "paper of
record", I'm afraid.

Perry