Fauxtography

Clever new word to describe the fraudulent news coming out of Lebanon. The best summary of what has been going on is here.

One of the most interesting features of the whole story is the power of the web to spot misrepresentation from professionals. On AOL recently there was a debate about the Web: is it a danger or a boon? Certainly there are thousands of porn sites and many criminals out there, but the availability of information in an easily accessable form is a tremendous blessing.

All professions are a conspiracy against the laity. So said Bernard Shaw in The Doctor's Dilemma. Nobody can now get away with misinformation about CLL since we have Chaya and ACOR, but there are plenty of other diseases out there where patients need protecting and plenty of other professions that need investigating. Photojournalists are the latest to be hit by the hidden expertise amongst bloggers.

Let me think; lawyers, real-estate persons, architects, surveyors, automobile engineers, artists, accountants...

That'll do for a start. Anyone who purports to have a special skill had better look out. The bloggers are about.