On the eve of the release of the report skewering CBS for trying to undermine the President in the final months of the presidential race, I've been getting some very funny emails about this CBS News report attacking the Dakota blogs for not being "objective." Please keep them coming. Anyway, the broad issue is the continuing plausibility of MSM's claims to be "objective" when they are obviously not. Bloggers, on the other hand, have opinions. It's what we do. And that's why SDP started this site a long time ago--to criticize the Argus which, let's face it, favored Daschle in the last race. Nobody is even contesting that, even the critics of the Dakota Alliance. Nobody is presenting a series of arguments saying 'here's why the Argus should be considered fair and why the claims of bias are wrong.' Want to get a sense of the Argus filter? See this list of 66 stories in national newspapers and magazines that weren't helpful to Daschle that SDP put together in October. The Argus didn't find them newsworthy, even though the WaPo, the NYT etc did. I see Captain Ed has noted that CBS has started criticizing bloggers now that they're about to get nailed for "memogate" and noted some in the commentariat didn't like the fact that I was a consultant to Thune, but I did a long post explaining the many problems I saw at the Argus long before I was a consultant. And SDP and Sibby and others (there was criticism going back 20 years, as it turns out, pre-blog, as the blogs discovered and revealed to those who didn't know about it) were criticizing the Argus a year-and-half before any consulting was going on. And the Argus reported I was a consultant on the front page the month after I agreed to be one. Kos and Atrios and maybe other liberal bloggers are consultants too. They have opinions. Good for them. Other bloggers take partisan advertisements, and good for them too. Blogs never claimed to be "objective" as CBS did. Anyway, if one read the blog for more than a post they would know it was pro-Thune. And nobody ever wrote in and said 'what you wrote about Daschle/Argus was wrong.' I would have posted a correction immediately. It was mostly stuff that the Argus simply refused to report. The posts included links and/or text with citations for people to review the information for themselves. Sometimes a pdf of the articles/information was posted. It would have been easy to critique or debunk what was written on the blog, but let's face it, the evidence was strong and there wasn't room for debunking. That's why Daschle and the Argus didn't try. If they have counter-arguments, let's hear them, at long last. As for the FEC, this is absurd. Who is actually in favor of the FEC "regulating" the blogosphere? CBS? Captain Ed says it best:
So now CBS favors regulating political speech? Will CBS, with their vaunted credibility in shreds after the Memogate debacle, agree to allow government regulators pre-screen their content in order to make it more credible? I suspect that ABC and the New York Times may decline to go that far in propping up CBS against the blogs.
Beginning next year, the F.E.C. will institute new rules on the restricted uses of the Internet as it relates to political speech.
“I think those questions are going to have to be asked and answered,” said Lillian BeVier, a First Amendment expert at the University of Virginia. “It’s going to be an issue and it should be an issue.”
Under any other circumstances, that would prompt screams of outrage at Black Rock, but now CBS wants the government to protect them from the big, bad blogosphere. 'Free speech for me but not for thee' must have become the new mission statement at Viacom.
I suppose that, as a strategy, going on attack against the credibility of bloggers at least makes them look like they're trying. If nothing else, it will keep the rest of us laughing until the Memogate report reminds us what a lack of integrity really looks like.
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