IN PRAISE OF BLOGGERS

There’s a war going on internally. I have to admit that the Machiavellian side of me is thirsting for Dan Rather’s blood as an example of lousy, partisan journalism. He and CBS have been pushing forth an agenda for years that, regardless of your politics, is an insult to what journalism is supposed to be: impartial, fair, and balanced. Sadly, precious little of the media adheres to that criteria. We are in a code yellow: yellow journalism.

However, I did mention an internal war, and there is that other side: the side that’s embarrassed to watch the demise of true journalism. I suppose this is offset to a large degree because I'm proud to be in the blogging community. We the bloggers are now the ones who now are keeping the journalists honest, making a once-honorable-now-lazy-and-partisan profession have to re-examine itself for those journalistic principles that many of its reporters and editors have sadly lost.

Of course, bloggers aren’t subject to the same scrutiny that journalists are (or should be). Bloggers can, and do, write anything they want, no matter how outrageous. But this makes the whole Rather/CBS scandal even more stunning: “amateurs” are exposing a man and a network that so want to see Bush defeated that they skipped basic journalistic scrutiny and ran a story with so many holes in it that 30 Dutch boys couldn’t save it.

Bloggers have become the watchdogs of this lazy journalistic environment that we now live in. Their watchdog are others who read their columns and make public comments. And that’s as it should be. America is possibly coming to a new reality, where bloggers do the research that used to be done by ethical journalists, and are then checked by their readers. Unfortunately, those who continue to get their news solely from major networks and big city newspapers are the equivalent of dumb asses being led around by the nose.