Rathergate: the Crowd is Wiser than the Institution

My son, David has been talking for a few months about The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. I’ve been writing about the other side of the question: how institutions manage to ignore unpleasant truths. “Rathergate” provides an example of both: As Kathleen Parker has observed, the blogosphere has beaten out CBS on the question of whether Texas Air Nation Guard documents discredited George Bush. CBS, acting as an institution, behaved exactly the way several bishops, intelligence officials, and business executives do: it ignored warnings and accused Bush of shirking his duty.

For an explanation of why this happens, see my posting, Why Smart Executives (and Bishops) Fail.

Maybe Kathleen Parker is right: the wisdom of crowds, found in the blogosphere, can overcome the tendency of large instituions to ignore unpleasant truths.