Two Gray Ladies In One!

“Keith Olbermann Calls for Oppo Research on Glenn Beck, Others at Fox”, the New York Times reports, getting nervous in the process:

It all makes some of us at Decoder a bit uncomfortable. While Mr. Beck may be serving as a proxy for the party of opposition, his targets are members of the administration, a rugged game to be sure, but not one that attempts to investigate journalists and commentators for having contrary opinions. What might Mr. Olbermann do if someone digs up dirt on his intended targets, who, like him, work in the infotainment industry and have been elected by no one? Once the game of oppo research on the press begins, it’s hard to tell where it might stop, no?

Good to see the Times defending the bounds of journalism with one hand, while it attempts to out anonymous bloggers with the other.

There was a post today (with a time stamp of 5:38 PM EDT) on the Times’ “Media Decoder” blog titled, “NYTPicker Revealed. A Blogger With A Cause: Us” written by Rebecca Ruiz. It purported to name the person behind the NYTPicker blog (a sort of center-left version of the conservative Media Research Center’s TimesWatch). Ruiz’s post was up for approximately half an hour, before cooler heads prevailed, possibly because the item was getting noticed on Twitter.

Update: Or perhaps because it was wrong.

Update: And Two, Two, Two Olbermanns in one! “Olbermann Flip-flops, Tells Kossacks NOT to Dig Up Dirt on Beck” — “Probably thought about what happened to the last guy to declare war on Beck . . . .”, Glenn Reynolds adds.