Circular logic

Here’s a nice bit of circular reasoning for you: my colleague Jim “The Chief” Galloway of the Journal-Constitution wrote a blog post Wednesday morning on the rumor that the College Football Hall of Fame will relocate from South Bend, Ind., to Atlanta.

In his post, Galloway cites as confirmation of the rumor an article appearing in the Wednesday edition of the South Bend Tribune. But if you follow the link to the Tribune article, you will find that the article bases its report on a blog item that Galloway posted on Tuesday about the Hall of Fame relocation rumor.

In other words, Galloway blogs about a rumor, a local newspaper in Indiana then publishes an article based on Galloway’s blog item, and Galloway then blogs again and cites the Indiana article as confirmation of his original post.

I don’t know if it was intentional, but my friend Jim has used the same gambit employed by the Bush administration in the runup to the invasion of Iraq. That was when Bush administration officials leaked an “exclusive” to the New York Times that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction, then had Vice President Dick Cheney appear on the Sunday talk shows to cite the Times article he had leaked as “proof” that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction.

Makes sense to me.