Journalistic Integrity

This morning there was a story floating around the net, I found it linked on Facebook, it has since been removed. The story is a complete SHAM.

The story is this: Military to Pledge Oath To Obama, Not Constitution and it has been posted on numerous sites including this one as well: Military to Pledge Oath To Obama, Not Constitution

Some people wonder why it’s taken so long for bloggers to become reputable in their reporting and commentary (Op/Ed pieces), I hold the above 2 posts up as testament to the fact, the blog world is STILL filled with IDIOTS!

Reactionary posting, *rumor mill* posting, the posting of unsourced and unverified stories, the “Well, I got it from a friend in an email and you know, they are always really good, they got it from this other friend and…”, that is the kind of CRAP that makes bloggers look bad!

I did a bit of investigation and almost immediately saw this entire story for what it was, a well constructed FAKE, a SHAM, a CRAP piece of slander journalism. One of the really great Mil-Blogs, BLACKFIVE, was also able to dispel this story and it’s associated sources as FAKE.

Folks, I have NO USE for Barack Obama, I make NO secret of that fact. That said, I will not be a part of, nor will I allow to stand, an outright LIE about the President of the United States of America. Barack Obama has his faults, on that nearly ALL of my readers will agree. We will have more than ample ammunition available to use against Obama in the blogs, we don’t have to make up lies. The truth will suffice.

I have NO problem with stating my OPINION, I do it quite often. But if I make a post that IS opinion, I make it quite obvious that it is just that, opinion. If you’re going to make a post that is based on news, from the MSM, or any other source, you had best be prepared to defend that post with a SOURCE. Citation is a writers best friend, and without citation, there can be NO journalistic integrity. It’s a simple matter of exercising professional and personal responsibility.

Don’t feed the *rumor mill*, check your sources, then recheck them, several times. If a blogger can’t post using responsible, and reputable information, then they need to stick to posting pictures of their kids and their cat, or talking about recipes. Go on splogging to your hearts content, but don’t try to pass off some fake BS like this as responsible blogging. Leave the serious blogging to REAL bloggers.