Sadly this type of work happens here in the U.S. as well. Take Yahoo News, who recently ran a story about the fake controversy surrounding Obama's planned education speech. I won't even get into the absurdity of criticizing our Head of State, for performing Head of State functions, that will be done by others. What I do want to take issue with is this articles' "research" into public opinion.
Across the blogosphere, comments covered the spectrum, from critical tosupportive, and from one student, a little anger:
"I sent my children to school to be educated NOT indoctrinated." — justamom
"The fact that people want to keep their kids from hearing the President of the United States encourage them to do well in school shows a true level of ignorance." — Firefey
That's right, scrolling through the comment section of online news sites now counts as research. I really don't care what "justamom" thinks about the speech, and not because she's just a mom, but because I don't know if she really represents anything. Quoting the head of the Florida GOP is newsworthy, because of his position, but if you want to demonstrate substantial public opinion, this is not the way to go. Also, the author noted that she took these names from the blogosphere, even though they where comments from traditional news sites. Somebody who does journalism on the internet should understand the difference between the two.
