Exit Poll Propaganda

Back on November 4th, The American Spectator quoted sources who said that the bogus exit polls of election day afternoon were leaked–or heck, manufactured–by the Kerry Camp to the press.

But rather than investigate their source, and how they made their way to both bloggers and Matt Drudge, the legacy media are using them as a tool to trash the Blogosphere.

The Blogosphere is often a source of news as it happens–or sometimes seemingly before it happens, which means that (just like the MSM) sometimes it gets things wrong. But unlike the typical blow-dried anchorman, bloggers’ extensive use of hyperlinks make it easy for anyone to track sources and follow a story, and allow readers to decide for themselves the accuracy of a story or opinion. Read enough of the Blogosphere and use Google News enough, and it’s possible to know far more about a story than, say, Dan Rather does. (Not that that’s saying much of course these days.)

As N.Z. Bear writes, while leftwing blogger Wonkette’s posting of exit polls has been used by the legacy media as the posterchild of all that’s wrong with the entire Blogosphere, she had an obvious, easy to understand warning notice alongside them:

Publishing a story which isn