[jayp]

I agree with you from the perspective of people of France (or anyone outside the area). And that point is not lost on me.

I am talking about the credibility of the author. The line referenced in the article is written by the author. They are not words attributed to others in a quote. If it's not in a quote, the author takes on the responsibility with respect to the correctness of the fact. If the author can't verify this simple fact, I don't know if I can trust the article with all the one-sided claims presented.

[dllthomas]

That they can't be troubled to verify facts that don't have any relevance whatsoever to the content of the post should only very weakly effect your expectation of whether they verify facts that are central to the content of the post. Granted, here on the internet, that's not as high a prior as it might be.