Sicily

I know this isn't a normal post, and it's long overdue, but I wanted to share a quote I saw today on espn.com of all places. The ESPN ombudsman keeps track of their reporting methods and critiques or criticizes when the need arises. At the end of her most recent piece, she wrote this:

"While working on this column, I happened upon this passage in a book I was reading, and thought the old world of Sicily sounds a lot like the new world of media:
'Nowhere has truth so short a life as in Sicily; a fact has scarcely happened five minutes before its genuine kernel has vanished, been camouflaged, embellished, disfigured, squashed, annihilated by imagination and self-interest; shame, fear, generosity, malice, opportunism, charity, all the passions, good as well as evil, fling themselves onto the fact and tear it to pieces; very soon it has vanished altogether.' -- from "The Leopard," by Giuseppe di Lampedusa"