1115.org

(If you dislike reading about blogs as much as I dislike writing about them, feel free to skip this piece.)

I’m really surprised that I haven’t learned my lesson by now. Each passing White House lie, scandal, reversal, coverup and revision should have demonstrated that the mainstream media (MSM) isn’t interested in doing real journalism, and there aren’t any hungry young Woodward and Bernsteins out there with press credentials. Still, I thought that the Gannon/Guckert story would get their attention, if for no other reason than his very existence hurts their credibility. And also the fact that he is a whore.

Yet for more than two weeks, the only reporting done on the story was by blogs, led by John Aravosis of AmericaBlog.

At the same time in a section of the blogosphere not for the easily-annoyed, CNN executive Eason Jordan was the target du jour for comments he made about the U.S. military targeting journalists in Iraq. Despite watching an unhealthy amount of CNN programming, I knew nothing of this story save for what was reported on right-wing blogs.”

With two major blog-initiated stories causing commotion simultaneously, the 24-hour cable networks decide to cover the story. Typically for news organizations primarily concerned with ratings and wishing to shift the focus away from stories they were beaten to, the main issue was blogs, not Gannon/Guckert or Jordan.

It’s funny that the main reason CNN felt the need to run segments on bloggers was Gannon/Guckert. And while Kurtz, Rothenberg and Woodruff were busy making sure everyone knew that blogs functioned without editors and fact checkers, they completely missed the irony that Gannon had no editor, no fact checker, and asked ideological questions. By their definition that pretty much makes him a blogger. And he got credentials.

CNN’s blog coverage culminated with Friday’s edition of Inside Politics with Judy Woodruff. With Woodruff looking exponentially more uncomfortable than she did six years ago when blowjobs were the topic, three segments aired featuring CNN’s “blog reporters,” CNN media analyst Howard Kurtz, pundit Stuart Rothenberg, and bloggers Jeff Jarvis, Paul Mirengoff, and Ana Marie Cox.

A few quotes:

Woodruff: With us once again is Jacki Schechner. She’s our blog reporter. She’s joined today by another blog reporter, Cal Chamberlain.

Schechner: We took a look at Whiz-Bang also, which is a more right-leaning blog, for its perspective. And it has “Gannongate Update.” Everything is a “gate.”

Chamberlain: Gannongate.

Schechner: Maybe it’s the gates in New York, the gate.

Chamberlain: Could be.

The above was said without irony. These “reporters” think that the suffix “-gate” comes from a public art project instead of the most famous burglary in American history.

Woodruff then asks:

To some people it might seem as though the Web loggers, bloggers, have come out of nowhere. In fact, some have…Who are the bloggers?

Her question is answered by a taped montage of Jarvis (BuzzMachine), Mirengoff (PowerLine) and Cox (Wonkette). Mirengoff (whose blog last week called former President Jimmy Carter a traitor) equates his standing as an attorney with credibility and ability to judge character. Funny, coming from a member of a party that demagogues lawyers at every opportunity. Cox then spills the beans and “outs” all of us:

This is, you know, a terrible truth that bloggers, I think, don’t want to admit to themselves. I get my information from the mainstream media.

Thanks, hun. You’ve really blown the lid off of the illusion that we all have our own independent news-gathering operations. How am I going to justify my tax return now? Cox’s other gems when asked “why blog?”:

“No one cared what I had to say before I started doing Wonkette. Ego gratification.”

This is the best CNN could do? This is the best “the Paris Hilton of blogging” could do? Was she constrained by CNN’s Standards & Practices department telling her that she couldn’t say “ass-fucking”? There are plenty of left-leaning bloggers who could string a few intelligent sentences together in support of their profession. What, Washingtonienne wasn’t available?

If they were looking to present blogs in a suspect light, mission accomplished. But simply letting them hang themselves wasn’t enough, not when walking conflict of interest Kurtz and blog nay-sayer Rothenberg are willing to burn any shred of credibility they have left.

A few excerpts:

Kurtz: People have to be smart and figure out who they find to be credible, because bloggers don’t have any editors or fact checker, and so they can be wrong, they can be reckless, they can be irresponsible.

< ...>

Woodruff: So when they do that, Stu, I mean, they can affect the course of a story and the course of politics.

Rothenberg: Yes, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t blog, you shouldn’t read bloggers.

Kurtz: But it’s not like people standing on the street corner. I mean, they now have an effective message delivery system that rivals having a camera here.

Rothenberg: It isn’t — yes, but, Howie, look, if CNN — if Inside Politics is going to do segments on bloggers, they ought to do segments on C-SPAN callers. They have opinions, too. And they may be digging research, and they may have news. And you ought do segments on poster — people who put up posters on building sites. They have opinions.

< ...>

Rothenberg: If people at CNN and CBS News are making these decisions on the basis of the bloggers, it seems to me they ought to be — they ought to be embarrassed about it. You know, we don’t know who these people are.

< ...>

Rothenberg: Well, I think my point, Howie, is that I’m not saying that they — people shouldn’t blog or you shouldn’t read them. I think that as an institution, we should be skeptical of blogging as an institution. I think…

I swear I saw Rothenberg on Sunday morning when I went out for the papers. He was carrying around a sandwich board and ranting about how the earth is flat and cell phones will give us brain tumors. If CNN thinks that they can stop hemorrhaging viewers by bashing blogs, they should reconsider. With continued media consolidation and pack mentality among reporters, people are finding it necessary to explore other options. As Ms. Cox so sharply pointed out, we get our news from them anyway, how far off base could it be? By comparing bloggers to “lynch mobs,” CNN ignores the point that blogs are just the latest information and communication medium available to people without access to media monoliths. And if those monoliths fail to discharge their duty as envisioned by Thomas Jefferson, others will step up to fill the void:

Our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Blogs are the opinion of the people. Not just the people who can afford to mass market their ideas or agendas.

Unfortunately, the embarrassment didn’t stop on Friday. Monday saw the “blog reporters” back at it, talking about one of the most vile, racist, right-wing blogs as if it was a normal, mainstream place to go. And they decided that since two prominent right-wing bloggers were blogging from hospital rooms due to family illness that “hospiblogging” is now a certified trend:

Schechner: But we wanted to mention real quickly about hospiblogging.

Tatton: Hospiblogging. We saw this last week. A couple of the big profile sites out there…They have people in their family who are sick. And they’ve been blogging from the hospital.

Schechner: So Judy, a term we hope we don’t hear more of. But hospiblogging, something we wanted to share with our viewers. And we hope everyone is OK.

Woodruff: OK. We’ve got to stay up all night long to keep up with all this. OK. Jacki Schechner, Abbi Tatton, thank you both. We’ll see you tomorrow.

It’s literally impossible that I was the only one who had to suppress the gag reflex.

Memo to CNN: When Peggy Noonan and Larry Kudlow get it and you don’t, it’s time to Shut the Fuck Up!