On Wed, 28 Mar 2007, Steve Bennett wrote:
But what do you really want to do when a respected, widely used blog claims that some living person bribed a member of parliament, and provides some kind of "proof"?
I'd say it depends. For instance, in the extreme case where the blog was a blog by a member of parliament who has been there, I'd give the blog at least as much credence as I'd give a newspaper article about the same thing. Sure, he could be lying in the blog, but he could also lie to the newspaper.
If the claims are that important, surely they will be picked up, verified and repeated by newspapers or other media?
That might be true if it's actually about a member of parliament, but there are claims that can have limited audiences, and yet be "important" in the sense that they are still encyclopediac subjects. It may be that nobody picks up the claim because nobody picks up most claims related to the topic, rather than because this claim is particularly unimportant.