Fisking

From Free net encyclopedia

Image:Fisk.jpg The term Fisking, or to Fisk, is a blogosphere term describing ruthlessly detailed point-by-point criticism that highlights errors, disputes the analysis of presented facts, or highlights other problems in a statement, article, or essay.

The Jargon File defines the term as:

"A point-by-point refutation of a blog entry or (especially) news story. A really stylish fisking is witty, logical, sarcastic and ruthlessly factual; flaming or handwaving is considered poor form. Named after Robert Fisk, a British journalist who was a frequent (and deserving) early target of such treatment." [1]

Fisking was coined by detractors of British journalist Robert Fisk in 2001 Template:NamedRef. It gained its current meaning following a trenchant three-paragraph attack by Andrew Sullivan on Fisk in December 2001.[2] The term is thought to have first appeared with its current meaning on either Instapundit or Sullivan's weblog,

Fisk's reporting style - mixing fact with analysis and criticism of Western government policy - has made him a figure of some controversy. Sullivan was responding to a dispatch by Fisk from Pakistan describing his savage beating at the hands of Afghan refugees:

"They started by shaking hands. We said "Salaam aleikum" – peace be upon you – then the first pebbles flew past my face. A small boy tried to grab my bag. Then another. Then someone punched me in the back. Then young men broke my glasses, began smashing stones into my face and head. I couldn't see for the blood pouring down my forehead and swamping my eyes. And even then, I understood. I couldn't blame them for what they were doing. In fact, if I were the Afghan refugees of Kila Abdullah, close to the Afghan-Pakistan border, I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find." [3]

Sullivan argued that Fisk's sympathy for his assailants was pathologically anti-American, relativistic and racist.

"What it means is that someone – anyone – is either innocent or guilty purely by racial or cultural association. An average Westerner is to be taken as an emblem of an entire culture and treated as such. Any random Westerner will do. Individual notions of responsibility or morality are banished, as one group is labeled blameless and another irredeemably malign. There’s a word for this: it’s racism." [4]

However in the blogosphere, someone who produces a fisking can, in turn, always be "counter-fisked" by someone else. [5]

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Comparisons and distinctions

Fisking can be compared to the Usenet style of responding to an argument's specific points by quoting lines prefixed with the ">" character. The difference is that with a Usenet line-by-line discussion, a large number of tangential arguments often develop while the main point of the original article and original response gets lost.

Fisking is different from flaming, with which it is sometimes confused. Fisking is not merely verbal abuse, although it may contain a substantial amount of derision, scorn or even profanity.

Fisking is similar to the line-by-line method in policy debate, where one debater addresses each point sequentially, dealing with each piece of an argument in turn, as opposed to addressing the entire thesis of his or her opponent.

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Notes

  • Template:NamedNote Irish journalist Eoghan Harris had earlier used the term "fisking" with a different meaning - "To fisk is not to face the facts for as long as possible and, when found out, to divert the public from your mistake by spinning shiny stories in the air." (Sunday Times, June 13, 1999). No-one else appears to have used the term in this sense, and Harris later remarked that he had "lost a coinage". (The Sunday Independent (Ireland), June 29, 2003, "Web man beat me to 'fisk' verb"[6]).
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External links

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