I would trust Snow over Biden because, if you recall, Biden has demonstrated himself (in his late 80’s presidential bid) as a plagirist - having stole chucks of speeches from the English Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock and consequently having to leave the race. In later years he’s demonstrated himself as a politically convenient blowhard ( in my estimation) and makes it seem that he is opposed to the war though I very clearly remember him in a press conference prior to it’s start saying “I have no doubt we’ll be greeted as liberators.” I think he’s an opportunist and I trust him very little indeed.

Your point about Stewart is an exceptional one and is well taken. Again - I don’t disagree at all. If I re-ranked these tomorrow I my very well rank them differently. But for to explain - I recall that there were two factors in my putting him at the top: 1. We know - and he reinforces - that he is a comedian first and foremost. There’s my built in grain of salt. But mainly - we never have any confusion about his ultimate agenda - the laugh. 2. He’s demonstrated as a comedian an unfailing integrity of the level journalists seem to be losing more and more each day. As I’ve followed his career, I’ve seen him fiercely avoid cheap shots for true laughs based on true insights. I have come to trust overtime that as a comedian he will not only look for the laugh, but re-look AT the laugh to make sure the implication is fair and appropriate. When he has crossed a line in the past, he’s re-checked himself (one example: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4196/is_20030608/ai_n10879280 ). So I trust that he’s making an effort to be responsible. But your point is inescapable. He gets his information from the same sources we do. Although I think his staff watch more CSPAN and a bigger sampling of different news sources than any of us have time to.

You might notice - I really just did now - that my top and bottom choices were entertainment figures rather than journalistic or political figures. Maybe, given my interests & passions, I felt more strongly or more qualified to give a thumbs up or down on them… I cop to that as well.

And yes - it is a dire sitch that we casually dismiss the reliability of the Vice President of the United States. It’s so unfortunate for oh so many people and for the country…

So you would trust Tony Snow before Joe Biden? Interesting. You must have had the same reaction to my putting Russ Kick over Jon Stewart. The point of this exercise was to stimulate discussion, so I hope you won’t take the following as a criticism of your rankings, which I very much enjoyed reading. As you point out, there are a lot of murky areas, and our thought exercise doesn’t take context into account.

My top choice was your second to top, and my bottom choice was your second to bottom. In the interest of furthering discussion, I would like to focus on those two extremes, and explain why I disagree. I welcome responses.

I think Jon Stewart is a well-informed comedian who has the ability to read the news and develop insightful and relevant commentary. His contribution is to find the absurdity of these situations, and he often does this by placing them in a larger context. It’s brilliant stuff. But this makes him a tertiary source. He’s getting his information, and probably much of his analysis, from many of the other sources on the list. That makes it difficult for me to rank him higher than them.

As for Rush Limbaugh, he is a liar, plain and simple. There are others on the list who take the facts and spin them to further an agenda. But that’s not what Rush does. Rush just plain makes stuff up. And while Sean Penn may be just a hothead actor with an agenda, I do believe that he believes what he is saying. He’s not a reliable source, no, but he has far more credibility in my opinion than Rush Limbaugh, who deliberately obfuscates.

By the way, how sad is it that the state of affairs is such that the Vice President of the United States ended up so low on both of our lists?

You know looking at this I’m not sure that I consider any of them entirely “reliable.” They ALL have drawbacks and should be taken with a grain of salt. I would say that they are reliable in presenting their particular perspective i.e. the Disinformation Company presents conspiracy theories reliably and Tony Snow presents the Administration’s policies and positions reliably, (while those policies themselves are not reliably in the public interest) - do you see what I mean? Honestly, my sense of reliability here tends to correspond to the extent to which we inherently and instinctively doubt them at the get go. But here are my rankings - which should be taken with consideration of my leftist leanings…

And as for the report, it’s just as well that they didn’t recognize the quote (although who says “thee” anymore?) because then the story would have been whether or not reading Romeo and Juliet caused him to want to take his own life over thwarted love.

I’m really not kidding. There’s your mainstream media.

I look forward to reading your rankings.

I noticed last night that you broadcast the text of an instant message that was sent to a female student at Virginia Tech by the perpetrator of the tragedy there:

“By a name, I know not how to tell who I am. My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself, because it is an enemy to thee. Had I it written, I would tear the word.”

You should have noted that the text was in fact a quote from the balcony scene of Romeo & Juliet. It was a very obvious reference. It’s a bizarre choice, but still a reference to what is the most famous scene in drama, and widely considered the most romantic. It would be rare that any college student or even high school student would not have been exposed to it. Your reporter followed the quote by saying “How could someone so quiet create so much fear?” We all recognize the horrifying and terrifying nature of the continued information we are continuing to receive about one of our nations most egregious and heinous mass murderers. But in trying to get a handle on how people could have let someone such as this slip through the cracks of our society to such a dark place, it’s important not to oversensationalize his every move. It’s not an inherently frightening quote. If it was recognized by a student as being from one of Shakespeare’s most “romantic” plays, they could, at least conceivably, have been somewhat flattered - though confused. It’s not uncommon among the educated to borrow Shakespeare’s words for wooing. There is so much about what was obviously a very ill young man to be disturbed at, particularly in his own writings. There is no need to sensationalize or overstate one attempt for this disassociated loner to connect with another human that may have been one of his more lucid moments. I think it’s a bit lazy to not have investigated what was clearly some sort of quotation on his part (even psychotic delusionals do not tend to speak in verse.) Paranoid schizophrenics - and there seems to be many indications that that was what he was - perceive even the smallest slights in the grandest terms. This would have likely been an example of that. He may have perceived the lack of favorable response to his gesture as yet another justification of his paranoia, which in my opinion would have been the more appropriate framing of the incident. Someone doesn’t become a fearsome monster because they quote poetry to girls they have crushes on. They become fearsome when they overreact to their lack of success and then enact a perceived revenge, which is clearly what occurred here. My concern is that the potential “copy cats” who may be stirred by some of the images and words being released from this individual will be further incensed if we approach our hindsight on this issue with overreaching demonization of every thing he did rather than considered evaluation and education about the nature of the relatively few mentally ill individuals who may be prone to violent behavior. There are, hopefully very few, but perhaps some equally troubled people who may, tragically, relate to such a figure - as terrifying as he is to the rest of us. These are people who few the world as endlessly prosecutorial. I would hope your coverage would avoid giving them further fodder for that perception.

So, Mr. ST, any thoughts? Was I very off base?

But with all that in mind, here are my own generalized rankings from most reliable to least reliable, based on my own conceptions of reliability and my varied knowledge of each of the twenty sources:

1. Seymour Hersh in the current issue of The New Yorker
2. Noam Chomsky in a new book published by AK Press
3. Bob Woodward in a new book published by Simon & Schuster
4. Joe Biden on This Week with George Stephanopoulos
5. Wolf Blitzer on CNN
6. Christie Todd Whitman on Real Time with Bill Maher
7. Thomas Friedman in a New York Times Op-Ed
8. Markos Zuniga on his blog The Daily Kos
9. Wikipedia in an entry with no controversy alerts
10. Russ Kick in a new book published by the Disinformation Company
11. Jon Stewart on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show
12. Katie Couric on The CBS Evening News
13. The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 2007 edition (Hardcover)
14. Michael Moore in a new documentary
15. Brit Hume on Fox News
16. Sean Penn while accepting an acting award
17. The White House website
18. Tony Snow from the White House briefing room
19. Dick Cheney on Meet the Press
20. Rush Limbaugh on his radio show

Of course, it’s entirely possible that they’re all full of BS.