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On the web, ideologues are both journalist and pundit. Indeed, with the rise of investigative blogging, we should expect a long future of biased, inflammatory "evidence" -- on both sides of the political spectrum.

These tendencies have been exaggerated by the internet, whose polarizing sites -- the Drudge Report and The Huffington Post, just to name a few -- give citizens the option of sealing themselves inside an echo chamber of their own beliefs.

The official psychological term for this behavior is "motivated cognition" -- a tendency to bias our interpretation of facts to fit a version of the world we wish to believe is true. For instance, one study found that college basketball fans, viewing the same video of a game, were likely to believe the rival team committed at least twice as many fouls as their own.

Political beliefs are even more susceptible. Research has found that when psychologists confront political partisans with facts contradictory to their opinions, they become even more convinced of their existing beliefs.

Motivated cognition seems as likely an explanation of Breitbart's poor video editing as do allegations that he is a racist. However, to appreciate fully the conditions that created Breitbart's skewed viewpoint, it helps to understand his role in the political world.

The Breitbart-Sherrod episode last month is perhaps the most blatant example of motivated cognition. A right-wing commentator who often defends conservatives in squabbles with Democrats, Breitbart received a video of Sherrod's speech after the NAACP made allegations of racism against the Tea Party movement. The edited video appears to show the audience laughing knowingly as Sherrod describes her initial hesitancy to help a white farmer.

That gave Breitbart all the evidence he needed to cry hypocrisy. He gloated, "Sherrod's racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups' racial tolerance."

Later in the video, Sherrod explains that she overcame her prejudices. (And the farmer, Roger Spooner, has since publicly defended Sherrod.) But by that time, Breitbart had already selected certain facts to fit his argument that the NAACP and Sherrod are racially biased. Indeed, he used Sherrod's description of the white lawyer as one of the farmer's "own kind" to dismiss her helpful behavior, and cited the crowd's laughter as evidence of bigotry by the NAACP.

Now, under traditional journalistic neutrality, an editor would have pressed Breitbart for a balanced interpretation of the video -- or, at least paired it with an explanation from Sherrod, who would have immediately explained that she was being quoted out of context.

But many bloggers are unencumbered by the integrity of balance, and the result was a viral video that led to an innocent women's firing.

Unfortunately, the pattern of gross misinterpretation of viral footage has a long, intimate relationship with the internet. Willingness to air all sides of a debate might save the public from yet another politically polarizing story.

I wish I could say the new generation of "digital natives" is more savvy to the transparent slant of commentary on the web. Unfortunately, of the roughly 200 student essays I read every quarter at the University of California, few show the ability to think critically about internet research.

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