[link|http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/517dhjcp.asp?pg=2|No wonder they're a bit huffy in talking head land]

Excerpt:

But the big news on August 6 was that Regnery allowed people to
download the "Christmas in Cambodia" section of O'Neill's book. While
Olbermann and others were worrying about mystical jazz, the new media
swung into action. Hugh Hewitt, Glenn Reynolds, Powerline, and other
bloggers immediately began investigating the book's allegations. The
blog JustOneMinute was the first to find the 1986 "seared--seared"
speech in which Kerry described his memory of being in Cambodia in
December 1968. On August 8, Reynolds took his digital camera to the
University of Tennessee law library and photographed the section of
the Congressional Record with the Kerry speech, further verifying the
chapter's central claim. That same weekend, Al Hunt talked about the
Swift boat ad on CNN's Capital Gang, calling it "some of the sleaziest
lies I've ever seen in politics."

Over the next 11 days, an interesting dynamic took hold: Talk-radio and
the blog world covered the Cambodia story obsessively. They reported on
border crossings during Vietnam and the differences between Swift boats
and PBRs. They also found two other instances of Kerry's talking about
his Christmas in Cambodia. Spurred on by the blogs, Fox led the August
9 Special Report with a Carl Cameron story on Kerry's Cambodia
discrepancy.

All the while, traditional print and broadcast media tried hard to
ignore the story--even as Kerry officially changed his position on his
presence in Cambodia. Then on August 19, Kerry went public with his
counter assault against Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and suddenly the
story was news.

I say:

All this self-righteous harrumphing about journalistic standards
might have worked in the says of Walter Cronkite, but not nowadays.
People are less creduluous of the boob tube these days. As for the
newspapers; before Watergate, it was always understood that each paper
had its political bias, and no one, not even the papers, pretended
otherwise. Then came Bob Woodward and the myth of the intrepid
reporter. That myth is dead now. It died in the past couple of years.
Jayson Blair, Andrew Gilligan and others let the last bit of juice out
of that balloon. Oh, and CNN's admission of having curried Saddam's
favor for access didn't help.

The question isn't whether Drudge and blogs are super reliable. The
question is whether the old media are any better. And despite their
pretensions, they're not. And everybody knows it.

So many [link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/news.html|mainstream news scandals] these days.
And they still have the chutzpah to talk about journalistic standards.
Or maybe it's not chutzpah. Maybe it's desperation.

[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/news.html#20040828|Home link]