Did MEMRI Blow It On the Apple Mecca Story? Yeah, Kind Of.
People sometimes ask us, "MR, do jbloggers all know each other?"
And we answer "well, not like 'know know'. We sometimes see each other at meetings and stuff - mostly World Bank colloquiums, IMF forums, those kinds of things. But to tell you the truth, most of the contact is via email - that's how we decide on any given morning who gets to write the New York Times frontpage and who gets stuck with planning the local interest stories for network news"
And people respond with "no seriously, do any of you ever talk to each other?"
And we'll say "well occasionally there's certainly some contact. OK, here's a good example. Last Friday, MEMRI pissed off Lynn-B of In-Context, because it turned out that their story about how the Apple Mecca was starting an Internet jihad was a little overblown. The "Islamist website" that MEMRI was talking about was probably just a couple of trolls in some poor guy's flickr comments section. So Lynn commented that this isn't a big deal and noted that blowing it out of proportion helped 'those who are trying to exploit this small lapse as a wedge to pick MEMRI apart'. She then wrote 'over to you, Omri.' We were busy this weekend, and so we blow off the post on Friday night and then again on Saturday night. Sunday afternoon we get an email, and it's two things: a link to Lynn's original post and a photo taken off of our MySpace profile and done up kind of like this. Obviously, we got the message."
And then those people look at us like we're kind of weird.
More seriously, about that MEMRI post. It looks like Lynn is right and this was a misstep - but it's impossible to tell, because MEMRI didn't go so far as to provide a link to the "Islamist website" that they were talking about. Apparently they're new to the blogosphere, and so they're still trying to figure out the conventions of allowing people to fact check them. If they were talking about this flickr page then obviously they were being stupid. But the MEMRI story says that the posts went up in October, while this picture is from April - so you can't tell, which is precisely our point. MEMRI knew they were going to get called out for this - either setting themselves up to defend themselves or giving bloggers some resources would not have been out of the question.
That said, MEMRI does indisputably great work bringing translations from the most important stations and mosques in the Arab and Muslim world. If they really were talking about the flickr page, then they've given netroots and non-netroots apologists an excuse to brush away ALL of MEMRI's work as "cherrypicking". Speaking of which, what the hell is MEMRI doing slumming Web 2.0 bait anyway? what next, mean MySpace notes about Israel from 15 year old Lebanese girls?
This is why the blogosphere is link-based. So that when somebody posts something, other people can track it down to see if what they said seems reasonable. Because even if it's just a couple of people threatening Apple on a real forum - not the flickr comment thread where they got shut down - then that's indicative of the tone and sensibilities of certain communities. And that's worth commenting on, no matter how "central" the site is. That, incidentally, is the answer to Dean Esmay's cherrypicking argument no matter how this turns out - the point isn't necessarily how many radical Muslims there are, but whether they've reached a critical mass and whether any moderate Muslims are standing up to them.
And we answer "well, not like 'know know'. We sometimes see each other at meetings and stuff - mostly World Bank colloquiums, IMF forums, those kinds of things. But to tell you the truth, most of the contact is via email - that's how we decide on any given morning who gets to write the New York Times frontpage and who gets stuck with planning the local interest stories for network news"
And people respond with "no seriously, do any of you ever talk to each other?"
And we'll say "well occasionally there's certainly some contact. OK, here's a good example. Last Friday, MEMRI pissed off Lynn-B of In-Context, because it turned out that their story about how the Apple Mecca was starting an Internet jihad was a little overblown. The "Islamist website" that MEMRI was talking about was probably just a couple of trolls in some poor guy's flickr comments section. So Lynn commented that this isn't a big deal and noted that blowing it out of proportion helped 'those who are trying to exploit this small lapse as a wedge to pick MEMRI apart'. She then wrote 'over to you, Omri.' We were busy this weekend, and so we blow off the post on Friday night and then again on Saturday night. Sunday afternoon we get an email, and it's two things: a link to Lynn's original post and a photo taken off of our MySpace profile and done up kind of like this. Obviously, we got the message."
And then those people look at us like we're kind of weird.
More seriously, about that MEMRI post. It looks like Lynn is right and this was a misstep - but it's impossible to tell, because MEMRI didn't go so far as to provide a link to the "Islamist website" that they were talking about. Apparently they're new to the blogosphere, and so they're still trying to figure out the conventions of allowing people to fact check them. If they were talking about this flickr page then obviously they were being stupid. But the MEMRI story says that the posts went up in October, while this picture is from April - so you can't tell, which is precisely our point. MEMRI knew they were going to get called out for this - either setting themselves up to defend themselves or giving bloggers some resources would not have been out of the question.
That said, MEMRI does indisputably great work bringing translations from the most important stations and mosques in the Arab and Muslim world. If they really were talking about the flickr page, then they've given netroots and non-netroots apologists an excuse to brush away ALL of MEMRI's work as "cherrypicking". Speaking of which, what the hell is MEMRI doing slumming Web 2.0 bait anyway? what next, mean MySpace notes about Israel from 15 year old Lebanese girls?
This is why the blogosphere is link-based. So that when somebody posts something, other people can track it down to see if what they said seems reasonable. Because even if it's just a couple of people threatening Apple on a real forum - not the flickr comment thread where they got shut down - then that's indicative of the tone and sensibilities of certain communities. And that's worth commenting on, no matter how "central" the site is. That, incidentally, is the answer to Dean Esmay's cherrypicking argument no matter how this turns out - the point isn't necessarily how many radical Muslims there are, but whether they've reached a critical mass and whether any moderate Muslims are standing up to them.
