OPEN

“Is someone or something behind all of these online conspiracy theories?”, is something I often ask myself in my darker moments. ;-)

Now Newsnight’s blog brings us its three golden rules for assessing official versions (OVs) against conspiracy theories (CTs):

1. Journalists usually take government facts in good faith, albeit they’re somewhat spun and edited….
2. Use Occam’s Razor – which means that the best explanation of any event must make as few assumptions as possible. ….
3. Who has the better background narrative – the CT or the OV?….

Anyone who likes their news raw and uncooked (and in the age of the RSS feed there’s never been a better time to build your own, personal newswire with sources direct from the frontlines, literally) better develop some personal rules and filters on conspiracy theories – and bias generally for that matter.

: : During the recent conflict in Lebanon, I had a information-diet of some core (some CTs would say biased, liberal, western) traditional news sources, and pro-Israeli, pro-Lebanon blogs giving their respective highly subjective takes on the news.

And unless you have a great depth of understanding of the background politics, geography and personalities (bloggers and players) you have to start making sense of what may be opinions, facts or otherwise.

I don’t mind admitting, it all made my head hurt a bit trying to work it all out, and not having a determinedly partisan position to fall back on. That’s the joy of religious and political dogma for those who but it – you never have to make your mind up again and the arguments are all written out for you in advance…