Maybe you should be likewise triply on guard against your own prejudice against bourgeois, mainstream, right wing, and nonleftist news stories. Have to guard yourself against prejudice, no?
In fact, no. Prejudice is a way of having some sort of intellectual economy. This is Kuhn 101. I know Maoists from way back and know about them too -- given when I know, they will have to prove to me that they have changed rather than my feeling that I have to do the extra work to find out whether they have changed.
Likewise, if I read something in the Washington Times or the Wall St Journal that suggests something nice about Bush, I'm gonna be skeptical because I know the source, the actor, and the source's attitude towards the actor. You would do the same. You would not say, I, Yoshie, am prejudiced against the Times and Bush, so I better work extra hard to be on guard against my bias and take hours or days to research the facts before coming to a judgment. You're gonna say, bullshit. And rightly too.
Facts are important. Sometimes it is necessary and important for someone, anyway, to get them right. Generally the rest of us have to take the word of someone who has made the effort, since most of us are not Noam Chomsky can cannot research every point from the ground up. So I rely on Getty for my Stalinist body counts, and so forth.
Which facts are worth researching, or even finding out are worth researching is another layer of complexity. Not all are for everyone, even to the extent of finding out who is reliable and says what about them. Vita previs, scienta longa.
In the present instance (the issue of alleged Nepalese Maoist homophobia), I really don't care all that much what the facts are -- sorry if that reveals me as a dogmatic bigot -- I don't have to know the facts about the Nepalese revo to be able say, homophobia has no place in socialism, however backward the Nepalese may be (contra James H.). If it turn out that the Nepalese, mirable dictu, are not homophobic, I was still right, and good for them.
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com