Fred Bauder wrote:
No, but we do need to recognize the bias built into the system and compensate for it as much as we are able. To bring it home, many millions are incarcerated here in the United States in our own "Gulag". To the extent posible, those who have some contact and knowledge of this situation need to present "their side" of the story.
Hopefully just by presenting verifiable facts, with a minimum of spinning it. A lot of our articles that have had little-known-but-true facts added to them start to read a lot like leftist blogging, with a strong undertone of "THIS IS WHAT THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW!!!!". It's often not explicitly stated, but it's irritating when you can obviously tell the political leanings of the person who wrote the article just through a casual reading. I usually stop reading when I realize whoever wrote a particular article is trying to convince me of his or her viewpoint.
FWIW, the use of that Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam Hussein's hand is a common culprit. It belongs some places, but it shows up a lot more places than it belongs, as if someone is really trying to work it in everywhere. Some of the circumcision stuff also reads like it was written by anti-circumcision activists. The tone is just wrong, even if the facts (and even the conclusions) are fine: you can tell when an article was written by someone who has a strong personal opinion about the matter. Generally, it'd be nice if people avoided editing articles they had a very strong personal opinion about, or at least let someone who didn't care much do a thorough re-editing afterwards.
-Mark