Googling the news

One of my favourite internet hobbies is to watch the television news with Google by my side. When I come across an interviewee I have never heard of before, I check them out on Google to find out a bit more about them. This is particularly rewarding with Channel Four News.

Tonight's piece on the Rumsfeld letter signing imbroglio featured an in interview with someone called Sue Neiderer who was clearly very upset that Rumsfeld hadn't signed her letter of condolence personally. A quick googling shows us that she also:

is a prominent member of an anti-war organisation called Military Families Speak Out
accused the military of misleading her son into enlisting and
heckled Laura Bush (and was arrested for her pains).

Now none of these things make her a bad person, and surely everyone feels sympathy for her loss, but to present her as simply a grieving mother, upset by Rumsfeld's use of a signing machine, is dishonest reporting by Channel Four.