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August 4, 2008
Dig-it-all! “Truthy” His-Stories On the Decline
Last week we failed to notice one post from Noticing New York.
The YouTube vid showing a cop taking down a cyclist at last month's Manhattan Critical Mass ride has people thinking about the massive digital archive being created on the Internet:
No longer will history be written by the ribbon-cutters if big megadevlopements succeed. NOT if they are unwilling to stick to the truth.
Digital technology is comprehensively laying down the actual facts.
Just take a look at Norman Oder’s story today, “Typo? City/state letter on tax-exempt bonds backdates MTA RFP by three years” where he zeros in to block the tricky use of a backdating “typo” amongst other organized misinformation in a letter to the IRS by which the New York City Industrial Development Authority and the Empire State Development Corporation attempt to rewrite history. They have reason to try to rewrite history since the history is not pretty. (History includes the award of 22 acres of Brooklyn to Ratner Organization on a no-bid basis, giving Ratner a theoretical monopoly on 30 contiguous acres.)
Once upon a time the true history of big city development was inaccessibly buried in musty old city records. Only the power brokers who wanted to tell a story with their particular slant could mobilize the resources to selectively surface the facts or non-facts that supported the tale they wanted to tell. Now you know that if you want the true story about a project like Atlantic Yards you skip the official press releases and quickie news stories that feed off them and go to sources like Oder’s Atlantic Yards Report.
Posted by lumi at August 4, 2008 3:45 AM