My sense is that Easongate, even in the blogosphere, lacks the traction of Rathergate because of lack of video.

CBS was stupid enough to launch its libel on national TV. Eason was stupid enough to spout off at a hot house liberal shindig behind closed doors. The political impact is muted.

With luck and persistance, his slimey butt will get nailed, but without the heat and light of Rathergate.

Which also calls into question the near and midterm consequences of Gunga Dan’s treason. Where are the promised resignations or terminations?

Maybe stonewalling works?

Where’s the outrage?

Same goes for Gergen. I had thought him too delicately diplomatic these days to weigh in. Good for all of them.

LouMinatti,

Isn’t that Dutch English test you link to excerpted from Stupid White Men, Chapter 5: “Do you feel like you live in a nation of idiots? I used to console myself about the state of stupidity in this country…” Michael Moore has truly done us proud, hasn’t he?

I read your remarkable link. I am reminded again of the extent to which Europeans are unaware of their ignorance of America. The fill-in the-blanks essay displays, of course, bad English as well as the spectacular anti-American quality you note. If you know anyone at the University of Leiden, you might bring to their attention that, according to a Chinese ranking of the world’s universities, it ranks 63d in the world, just below Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and above Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio. You also might suggest that, if they are interested in improving their English and learning more about the world, they might consider attending Case Western or Carnegie Mellon, even though those universities ranked in the same survey only 43d and 44th among American universities.

The military are doing what they are supposed to do, shoot people and blow things up,not a difficult concept to to understand.

What is difficult to understand is why journalists were too ignorant,incompetent or careless as to get in the line of fire.

This also begs the question as to why they were so close to the opposition as to get mistaken for them.

It is time there were strict rules of engagement for the media.

I don’t think the MSM is afraid of the blogosphere. I think they’re trying to manipulate and control it by ignoring blogs which challenge their worldview.

If you said the majority of blogs challenge their worldview, ergo they’re ignoring the majority of the blogosphere, you might be right for the most part, but I think there’s a bit more to the story than that.

Here’s my reason: Tim Blair nails it. He shows how an article at D*ily K*s gets retransmitted by no fewer than three Australian MSM outlets within days.

The MSM isn’t ignoring the blogosphere. They’re fighting to win it.

The blogosphere is basically the “Letters To The Editor” gone mad. In the past the MSM could control the letters they published and broadcast, reassuring their readers with great subtlety that all is well in their world. But the genie’s out of the bottle now, and everyone with an ISP connection can make their feeling loud and clear.

“Her story.” Got that?

This means, among other things, using language that is as neutral as possible. It is often claimed that no language is really neutral, but for gosh sakes, it would be easy to come up with a style guide with rules like this:

Use “said” rather than

argued

rebutted

denied

disclosed

vowed

claimed

***

Yeah, it would be duller. You’d have to rely on the facts to liven it up.

One of the many amazing things about this nitpicking linguistic “defense,” first marshalled by Jordan and now by Sambrook, is that it is absurd on the face of it (see http://neo-neocon.blogspot.com/2005/02/eason-jordan-wordsmith-extraordinaire.html ). It reminds me of some of Clinton’s more tortuous circumlocations (“depends what the meaing of ‘is’ is”), except it’s even more nonsensical.

Jordan and Sambrook remind me of Humpty-Dumpty in “Through the Looking Glass”: “‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ” And, until now, they’ve been getting away with it.

for example, this one: “the distinction he [Jordan] was seeking to make is that being shot by a sniper, or fired at directly is very different from being, for example, accidentally killed by an explosion.”

but is it? isn’t the passive end of those events pretty much the same? an unfortunate death. it’s the active end of those events that’s being highlighted by Jordan, in which case this statement merely begs the question. what is the critical difference between killing someone accidentally because they were near a bomb you dropped on a weapons facility and killing someone accidentally because they looked just like the ‘insurgent’ standing next to them with the rocket launcher? The answer is that without knowing anything about “intent” it is still a distinction without a difference — at least as far as culpability on the part of the ‘killer’ goes.

So in the end, Jordan’s comment here cannot have been a meaningful “reaction to a statement that journalists killed in Iraq amounted to “collateral damage”.” The question then becomes: was his non-responsive and unsupported defamation of the US military an accident or was it targetted?

(The other part of Stambrook’s piece that jumped out to me was the sly construction by which he permits himself to advance several unsupported contentions without taking responsibility for doing so: “This culture … has led some in the media community (not necessarily Eason or myself) to believe the military are careless..”

Not “necessarily”?? How VERY legacy media)

Among my stops this morning was Powerline where they’ve got Bill Moyers on a skewer and NRO where Donald Luskin is doing his usual yeoman’s job eviscerating Paul Krugman (I do believe Luskin has it within his power to drive Krugman right around the bend–proceed judiciously, Donald).

And it’s not just MSM who tremble before the blogosphere. In Washington, bloggers are fueling the fire of election reform. In So Dakota bloggers (who should have disclosed their connection to the Thune campaign) were instrumental in unseating Tom Daschle. It’s a brave new world out there and I feel privileged to be a (however small) part of it.

I don’t think we consumers of news and opinion are asking so very much. Accuracy, honesty, no cherry picking the facts. The news reported without opinion and opinion supported by facts. Is that so very tough?

This is a good thing. Those still standing will be better for it. We all will be better for it. I for one feel better already.