Sadly, you commit this fallacy a second time by suggesting that HVS’s reports are analogous to Prof. Harold Hill’s shyster salesmanship in “The Music Man.” The worst part of your argument is that it’s not even a good analogy! Painting HVS as “Hill-esque” like the character in the Simpson’s “Music Man” spoof ignores the fact that HVS isn’t trying to sell the city of Dallas on a boondoggle project. HVS doesn’t profit from the construction of a convention center hotel. As a consulting firm, they get paid regardless of the outcome of their report. P.S. If you had done your research, you would have found that they are a highly respected and successful company utilized by cities all over the world for this kind of work. That doesn’t make them infallible, but close scrutiny of their work demonstrates a track record that makes them credible.

Sadly, you really dropped the ball with your strongest argument by failing to provide the “knockout punch.” You stated that “…HVS who, after a 2004 study that said Dallas shouldn’t bother with a convention center hotel, came back in 2007 with another study that said Dallas should.” Okay… but WHY? What makes that change of opinion significant? Then again… maybe you didn’t drop the ball. Maybe you did do your homework and actually read the two reports and discovered that, over a period of three years, a change in one or more conditions actually provide support for a change in the recommendation. Unfortunately, this did not advance your effort to plant suspicion that HVS’s actions might be “questionable,” so you simply chose to leave these inconvenient truths out of your report?

I’m beginning to suspect that journalists’ greatest fear of the Internet is not that newspapers will become financial victims as much as the concern that readers will start holding them more accountable for their poor journalism!