tweetage:

The five most endangered words of the realtime internet era are:

Let me think about that.

Shirley Sherrod, the former rural development director for the Agriculture Department in Georgia found that out the hard way when she was fired by the Obama administration for her delivery of a supposedly racist speech. The speech was creatively excerpted, political bloggers and cable news commentators blew up the story, it entered the Twitterverse, and boom, Sherrod was asked to resign from her position.

Unfortunately, no one seemed to have time to listen to the whole speech. Once they did, Sherrod was showered with apologies and found herself taking calls from the President.

I think its a tragedy that in today’s society, the media has completely given up on their position as our fact checkers and become nothing more than a echo chamber for the instant give me now mentality of social media. 

It’s not about whether the media is biased, liberal or conservative. Is about the media failing to simply do its job properly. How can this happen when its now easier than ever to actually check facts? A couple of minutes of research before rushing to post a story can actually make a HUGE difference!

It’s all our fault for continue to play this game. We should be ashamed of ourselves