And wouldn’t you know it, Dave Winer himself presents an excellent example of why weblogs will never replace newspapers — because so many webloggers, including Winer, cut corners on fact checking things they publish. Look at this piece of nonsense Winer wrote yesterday,
Theoretically, a week from yesterday, we will know who Deep Throat was. The Washington Post, whose reporters invented the name, says “Only four people on the planet are known to have the name — [Bob] Woodward; his partner, Carl Bernstein; Ben Bradlee, the former executive editor of The Washington Post; and of course, Deep Throat himself.” If this is true, then we know that Deep Throat is John Dean, who plans to spill the beans in his book, coming out next Monday. John Robb thinks Deep Throat was Alexander Haig. Others say Henry Kissinger, William Colby (CIA) and L Patrick Gray (FBI).
As I keep saying, doesn’t anybody use Google to verify facts?
Yes, John Dean is writing an e-book to be published by Salon.Com about Deepthroat. No, he is not going to out himself as deep throat.
Dean has been openly speculating about who Deep Throat was for years. In 1975 Dean claimed that Deep Throat was Earl J. Silbert, one of the Watergate Prosecutors. In his 1982 book Lost Honor, Dean changed his mind and fingered Alexander Haig has Deep Throat.
Now Dean says that he’s spent 20 years investigating and this time he’s certain he’s identified the real Deep Throat. If Dean is going to out himself as Deep Throat, it is odd that he told the San Francisco Chronicle,
There’s one person who’s headed into Richard Nixon’s eternal history who outranks me as his worst enemy and that’s Deep Throat. Nixon said Dean was a traitor and Deep Throat was even worse. I wanted to visit with this person.
In fact it’s clear that Dean is just going to throw yet another name into the pot of people who have been identified over the years as Deep Throat. How Winer arrived at the bizarre idea that Dean was going to out himself is beyond me.
Personally, I don’t think Woodward and Bernstein were truthful when they claimed Deep Throat was not a composite character.