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Kerry Spot [ jim geraghty reporting ]
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SOMETIMES YOU CAN TRUST A GUY IN HIS PAJAMAS, SOMETIMES YOU CAN'T
I like this analysis from TKS reader Ted:
One could actually be a little optimistic about what lessons journalists might draw from the Rathergate aftermath. I don't need to tell you that Big Media's first reaction to the blogospheric forest fire was to dismiss it as the campaign of right-wing cranks in their pajamas. Please. As Glenn Reynolds, Hugh Hewitt, and others basically observed, the components of the blogosphere that really moved the Memogate story may have been conservatives, but they were serious, sober, and accomplished people, even if they didn't happen to be journalists - which a lot of Big Media has come to recognize (e.g., Time Magazine and Powerline).
In contrast, who got Mary Mapes into trouble? Flaky, shrill, and unreliable people who already purported to be journalists. In other words, the cranks in their proverbial pajamas were left-wingers. Mary Mapes worked for CBS, and built her story off of Online Journal. Now she's no longer at CBS, and her next job will probably be contributing to Online Journal. She's done, and that's quite a comedown. Any future Mary Mapes with a respectable Big Media job, no matter how partisan, is going to think twice about drinking from the left-wing fever-swamps to pursue a story, because they've seen how if you bend over too far, you fall in.
[Posted 01/14 03:15 PM]
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