There’s a reason I have a healthy Feedly<\/a>\u00a0portfolio. \u00a0Getting your news from Facebook<\/a>\u00a0can be hazardous to your knowledge.<\/p>\n

Sunday morning, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker appeared on Meet the Press, and was asked – predictably – about gay marriage. \u00a0Here are two FB posts from two of my friends, one libertarian, and one\u00a0a social conservative:<\/p>\n

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Neither FB friend was happy with what Walker allegedly had to say.<\/p>\n

In fact, the reporting on both is shoddy, short, and lazy.<\/p>\n

Taken separately, the comments appear to have come from two completely different people, and the headlines aren’t even reflective of the articles that they accompany. \u00a0(Click here for the City Pages<\/a> article, here for the Hill<\/a> report.)<\/p>\n

Taken together, they form a coherent, reasonable response to a trap question. \u00a0Walker says, in effect, that he doesn’t want to get distracted by the question, he doesn’t think it’s important to most people, but that for people who are worried about the Supreme Court’s decision, there are a couple of routes they could take – a Constitutional amendment, or having the states back out of the marriage license business altogether, acting as a recorder. \u00a0Neither of those courses requires any sort of presidential action – Constitutional amendments do not require presidential signatures, and state-level action on marriage is obviously not a federal issue. \u00a0And indeed, Walker doesn’t actually endorse either course of action.<\/p>\n

On the whole, it seems an admirable response, especially after 6 1\/2 long years of a president who not only has an opinion about everything, but a desire to incorporate that opinion into the Federal Register.<\/p>\n

But reading the headlines alone, you’d never know that. \u00a0And with FB’s increasingly silo-friendly algorithms, you’d likely never even know that the other article existed.
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