How Close to the Actual Story?

I am at home, waiting for Dave Murphy or one of his chaps to come by and fix the thermostat that we have been nursing along for years, including the use of Hundred Mile an Hour Tape for the last ten years.

So, I have been cleaning up EMails and found this thoughtful item:

I've become very unhappy with the quality of the reporting we are getting in the media.  In fact what we see is people repeating what others have written or told them.  So there is no original reporting.  In legal circles this would be inadmissible in a court because it is hearsay.

Can you or your wise readers have a way to put a quality factor on each news item.  Maybe the number of times it has been repeated.  "This is Brian Willliams reporting the shooting.  This is a level 5 repeat because it was level 4 in the newsroom where this was written."

I confess to having nothing original to say, which is why I chose the quote I did for the top of the blog.

But, I think that the writer has a point.  Where is the thread back to the original source?  Regarding the Patches Kennedy item earlier, I found differences in the story between the Providence newspaper and the Boston newspaper.  Who knows how Howie Carr will spin it?

Then we have, reportedly, The New York Times saying that it will not print information released from/stolen from the CRU in the UK, over Climate Change studies.  The reason is that the information was not meant for public release.  Is this the same NYT that published the Pentagon Papers, and was proud of it?  Is this the same NYT that bravely publishes US national secrets?  I checked the Sunday paper a few minutes ago and found that Mr Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr, was still the publisher.  Maybe it is the same paper, but with a new conscience.

I think the mystery writer is on to something and I declare this a level 2 report, although level 1 to the extent it is quoted, although if he got the idea from his wife, those numbers go to 3 and 2.

Regards  —  Cliff