Roger:

LA Times watch- In Peter Wallstein’s report on the Blog’s influence on the Rathergate story he breathlessly reports “Democrats point to the timeline as evidence of a right-wing conspiracy; Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe suggested to reporters Friday that White House political advisor Karl Rove might have cooked up the memos, presumably with the idea that they would be discredited. A Bush spokesman called the charge “nonsense.” He ends his story with a blog quote “Here, here, wrote another. ” But how do we know Buckhead is really not Karl Rove….”

I thought one of the main complaints of the MSM of the blogs is that wild rumours are posted and the blogs have no editing function to stop wild misinformation from becoming the common currency of the blog. Yet the respectable Times reports a unfounded wild spectulation by McAuliffe without the common courtesy of saying that at this point there is NO evidence beyond rumour or speculation that the McAuliife slime is true or not. By ending the story with a repitition of the unfounded rumour he gives more credence to a “Blog Like” rumour on the supposed journalistically pure just the facts reporting style that they haughtley claim to hold.You can’t accuse the blogs of the whore like rumour mongering charge while you are taking a $50 bill and spreading McAuliffe’s rumour without at least informing your reader that there is nothing but wild speculation supporting the charge. The Times reminds me of the TV preachers who lectured the country on loose morals while bonking their secretary. They also spread the de-bunked Freeper charge because that allowed them to spout “But apparently the entire thing was cooked up by a couple of amatuers on Free Republic”. You can critize blogs for printing rumours but they are shot down quicker then the Times cleans up their own mistakes and rumour spreading. Plus the blogs actually follow up and investigate the story while the MSM does it’s best to bury and ignore the story. If the Times and the rest of the MSM does not wake up and start reporting and investigating amd quit ducking and ignoring stories that don’t fit their political goals they will soon find themselves on the unemployment line. They should study the Luddite movement, they are showing Luddite tendencies and denial.