Talk:McGovern calls for whistleblowing before alleged US attack on Iran

From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!
Jump to navigation Jump to search

NPOV[edit]

i couldn't find any official US government authorities' responses to McGovern. If they haven't made any statements (e.g. this is illegal, lock this guy up, he's deranged, whatever), then we can't publish them of course. Boud 22:48, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A bigger issue, perhaps, is the question of if there is any news here. You're reporting one individual's public call for whistle blowers, but the person does not appear to be newsworthy in and of themselves. It looks more like political advertising, or something which might be reported in a blog, rather than news. I wouldn't want to see Wikinews reporting the calls which come from congressional figures on a daily basis, either. - Amgine | talk en.WN 23:05, 16 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

w:Raymond McGovern is one of the people who publicly said that the Bush administration's case for attacking Iraq was based on misleading evidence before the attack happened - i don't think you can deny that the attack on Iraq was not newsworthy. So his claim that the Bush adminstration's case for attacking Iran being based on misleading evidence - and hence his calling for whistleblowers - is surely newsworthy. Was w:Watergate not newsworthy?

The other problem if we're going to decide what is "political advertising" and what is "newsworthy" is on what objective basis this can be decided.

On the other hand, you list the problem of congressional figures. Well, politicians, whether members of Congress or President or whatever, should be expected to make biased statements in order to gain/retain political power. Does that make them less or more newsworthy? We had a wikinews article on bush's recent state of the union speech - he's arguably the world's second or third most powerful politician (after cheney and rupert murdoch?), but aren't his actions surely more newsworthy than his words? Only the problem is documenting his actions is much more difficult than documenting his public speeches...

Another aspect is that a big problem for wikinews is getting sources: while in some sense this might be thought of as McGovern advocating for wikinews, ohmynews, and so on, surely the encouragement of publication of primary material is itself news about the evolution of cyberspace and its link with the real world.

Anyway, enough rant. Nobody has any corrections to propose, so i'm shifting the tag to published. Boud 21:23, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe wrong of me to put this link as source afterwards but check it International 22:51, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]