“Mickie Coppa” posted a claim using the Washington Times as a source. I wrote that this was an unreliable source. He and I then exchanged the following comments.

Mickie Coppa  The source doesn’t matter when it’s true. When a number of other sources also confirm this, it doesn’t matter which one I post. You are free to research yourself before condemning any story due only to its source.

Me I am going to try hard to sound neutral and helpful in this response. If my tone isn’t successful, let me apologize in advance and assure you that I’ve done my best—spent a lot of time on this reply rather than one of my other priorities—, even if it turns out not to be good enough.

For starters, try to step back and consider how you would react to a post that makes a claim with support/”proof” via a link to a statement by Trump or one of his minions—or probably, a link to a Biden quote—as the authority. I assume (and hope) you would be at least highly sceptical (and more likely dismissive) of its validity and would not feel it worth your time to see if it were validated by sources you respect; I assume (and hope) you have better things to do with your life. I doubt it would matter that even Trump occasionally (perhaps like the stopped clock that is right twice a day) makes an accurate statement, albeit in service of some malign goal. In fact, if the source is one you don’t trust, I would guess you wouldn’t even care about any possible buried truth in the quotation.

A basic principle of persuasive writing, as you may know, is that it’s the writer’s (not the reader’s) job to present arguments required to maximize the chances that the writer be convincing. Of course, this will often include citations from sources that you believe the reader will find credible.

In the end, it is the writer’s task to make it as easy as possible for the reader to be persuaded without having to do further investigation of her or his own (unless motivated by your own intriguing content), though of course you include links to your sources just in case your reader wants to double-check them.

The problem here is that an informed reader will know that even if it happens now and again to get something right (especially information that buttresses its own propaganda), the Washington Times is such a biased source that it’s not worth taking the time to read it, or to grope around for the remote chance of corroboration from a source one trusts.

Your post reverses the persuasive sequence: instead of providing enough evidence to give your reader trust in your fairness, you expect a wary reader like me to do the work to find out if your argument is indeed fair and to be trusted.

And finally, even a supposedly reputable source, of course, can get something wrong, accidentally or because of its own agenda.

At this point, however, we’re sliding into the problem of objectivity and inevitable bias in what anyone (including you and I) argues. But that’s a topic for another day.