Weird Diplomacy

As I no longer travel regularly with POTUS (that's President of the United States in White House lingo) I was living vicariously today, checking out the news of George W. Bush’s European trip, and saw that the president was forced to apologize to Silvio Berlusconi for an insulting biography of the Italian prime minister that showed up in the U.S. government press packet handed out to the media.

 “Berlusconi was one of the most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for governmental corruption and vice,” says the profile, apparently lifted from the website of something called Encyclopedia World Biography. “Primarily a businessman with massive holdings and influence in international media, he was regarded by many as a political dilettante who gained his high office only through use of his considerable influence on the national media until he was forced out of office in 2006.”

Not only was the tone petty, but the news stale: Berlusconi, a longtime Bush ally and steadfast friend of the U.S., assumed power for the third time this past April. The Italian press went a little ape over it, I'm told, but the silly little episode begs the question: Is it that difficult in the eighth year of a presidency to get good help?

Until today, I had never heard of the Encyclopedia World Biography. Obviously, judging by the Berlusconi bio, objectivity isn’t its primary concern. After looking up George W. Bush’s biography in the thing, it also seems that it's neither fact-checked nor copy-edited. Bush is described as being “an all-around athlete” in high school, which he was not, and the entry states flatly that “his family’s powerful connections” got him into Yale, which may or may not be true. Ann Richards, the Texas governor whom Dubya defeated in 1994 is spelled “Aan,” and, well...you get the idea.

This kind of thing is a constant issue with a blog—as astute readers of “Loose Cannon” can attest—but it should not be the case with an encyclopedia. Moral of the story: Buy a newspaper! Every day! Buy magazines! Read books! Save the print media!

If you simply must get news or information from a computer  (and if you are reading this, you are online), be careful trolling through cyberspace. My pal, Sreenath Sreenivasan, journalism professor at Columbia Journalism School in New York, tells budding scribes—and others who desire to get their facts right—that they should be just as aware of their Internet surroundings as they would be if they were wandering around a major American city at night.Years ago when I was the writing coach at National Journal, and Internet searches were relatively new, I asked Sree to come to Washington and show the reporting staff how to get accurate information off the Web. It seems that I should have invited someone from the State Department to join us. 

My own contribution to the perils of our wonderful digital world is a well-documented warning about the ease with which misinformation traverses through cyberspace. Finally, always remember the words of a certain California-born philosopher: “Nothing digital ever dies!”