Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

A Difficult Public Face

by digby

Via Kevin and Atrios I see that Media Matters has released more data today about the cable news networks’ partisan imbalance:

* The balance between Democrats/progressives and Republicans/conservatives was roughly equal during Clinton’s second term, with a slight edge toward Republicans/conservatives: 52 percent of the ideologically identifiable guests were from the right, and 48 percent were from the left. But in Bush’s first term, Republicans/ conservatives held a dramatic advantage, outnumbering Democrats/progressives by 58 percent to 42 percent. In 2005, the figures were an identical 58 percent to 42 percent.

* Counting only elected officials and administration representatives, Democrats had a small advantage during Clinton’s second term: 53 percent to 45 percent. In Bush’s first term, however, the Republican advantage was 61 percent to 39 percent — nearly three times as large.

* In both the Clinton and Bush administrations, conservative journalists were far more likely to appear on the Sunday shows than were progressive journalists. In Clinton’s second term, 61 percent of the ideologically identifiable journalists were conservative; in Bush’s first term, that figure rose to 69 percent.

* In 1997 and 1998, the shows conducted more solo interviews with Democrats/progressives than with Republicans/conservatives. But in every year since, there have been more solo interviews with Republicans/conservatives.

* The most frequent Sunday show guest during this nine-year period is Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has appeared 124 times. Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) has been the most frequent guest since 2003.

* In every year examined by the study — 1997 – 2005 — more panels tilted right (a greater number of Republicans/conservatives than Democrats/progressives) than tilted left. In some years, there were two, three, or even four times as many righttitled panels as left-tilted panels.

* Congressional opponents of the Iraq war were largely absent from the Sunday shows, particularly during the period just before the war began.

Again, none of this is surprising to those of us who have been watching this stuff from our side of the aisle for the last decade or so.

Kevin and Atrios both focus on the interesting fact that there was a total lack of anti-war voices in the run-up to the war. Kevin says:

Why did the anti-war side get shunned so badly by the talk shows?

I suspect the chart on the right contains the answer. Aside from documenting the insane love affair that Sunday hosts have with John McCain, it shows that eight of the ten most popular Sunday talkers were senators and every single one of them voted for the war resolution. The reason that anti-war senators didn’t get much air time was just simple laziness: the talk show bookers kept booking their favorites regardless of what was happening in the outside world and regardless of whether that meant they were shortchanging their viewers. They were on autopilot.

Actually, it was not just laziness at all. We have evidence that this was a conscious decision on the part of the news networks:

While “Donahue” does badly trail both O’Reilly and CNN’s Connie Chung in the ratings, those numbers have improved in recent weeks. So much so that the program is the top-rated show on MSNBC, beating even the highly promoted “Hardball With Chris Matthews.”

Although Donahue didn’t know it at the time, his fate was sealed a number of weeks ago after NBC News executives received the results of a study commissioned to provide guidance on the future of the news channel.

That report–shared with me by an NBC news insider–gives an excruciatingly painful assessment of the channel and its programming. Some of recommendations, such as dropping the “America’s News Channel,” have already been implemented. But the harshest criticism was leveled at Donahue, whom the authors of the study described as “a tired, left-wing liberal out of touch with the current marketplace.”

The study went on to claim that Donahue presented a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war……He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration’s motives.” The report went on to outline a possible nightmare scenario where the show becomes “a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”

And wave it they did. Just as a refresher, let’s recall how the networks actually ended up covering the war:

Networks quickly scrambled to give names to their war coverage, with corresponding graphic logos that swooshed and gleamed in 3D colors accompanied by mood-inducing soundtracks. CBS chose “America at War.” CNN went with “Strike on Iraq.” CNBC was “The Price of War,” while NBC and MSNBC both went with “Target: Iraq”—a choice that changed quickly as MSNBC joined Fox in using the Pentagon’s own code name for the war—“Operation Iraqi Freedom.” The logos featured fluttering American flags or motifs involving red, white and blue. On Fox, martial drumbeats accompanied regularly scheduled updates. Promo ads for MSNBC featured a photo montage of soldiers accompanied by a piano rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.” All of the networks peppered their broadcasts with statements such as, “CNN’s live coverage of Operation Iraqi Freedom will continue, right after this short break.” Every time this phrase came out of a reporter’s mouth or appeared in the corner of the screen, the stations implicitly endorsed White House claims about the motives for war.

The networks also went to pains to identify with and praise the troops. Fox routinely referred to U.S. troops as “we” and “us” and “our folks.” MSNBC featured a recurring segment called “America’s Bravest,” featuring photographs of soldiers in the field. Regular features on Fox included “The Ultimate Sacrifice,” featuring mug shots of fallen U.S. soldiers, and “The Heart of War,” offering personal profiles of military personnel.

Much of the coverage looked like a primetime patriotism extravaganza, with inspiring theme music and emotional collages of war photos used liberally at transitions between live reporting and advertising breaks. Bombing raids appeared on the screen as big red fireballs, interspersed with “gun-cam” shots, animated maps, charts and graphics showcasing military maneuvers and weapons technology. Inside the studios, networks provided large, game-board floor maps where ex-generals walked around with pointers, moving around little blue and red jet fighters and tanks.

“Have we made war glamorous?” asked MSNBC anchor Lester Holt during a March 26 exchange with former Navy Seal and professional wrestler turned politician Jesse Ventura, whom it had hired as an expert commentator.

“It reminds me a lot of the Super Bowl,” Ventura replied.

Never mind all the dead people and the hundreds of billions of dollars flushed down the toilet.

This article has more about NBC’s directives in the run up to the war. Disgusting.

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The Times Gets Off One Of Its Knees

by tristero

The NY Times coverage of “intelligent design” creationism is improving somewhat from the days when Jodi Wilgoren (who has since changed her name to Rudoren) cheerfully fellated Christian Reconstructionists – the folks behind “intelligent design” – as they, along with other wackos, pursued the Wedge Strategy to inflict their racist, theocratic trash on the rest of us.

Today, Neela Banerjee and Anne Berryman turn in a good article on church celebrations of Darwin’s 197th birthday:

The event, called Evolution Sunday, is an outgrowth of the Clergy Letter Project, started by academics and ministers in Wisconsin in early 2005 as a response to efforts, most notably in Dover, Pa., to discredit the teaching of evolutionary theory in public schools.

“There was a growing need to demonstrate that the loud, shrill voices of fundamentalists claiming that Christians had to choose between modern science and religion were presenting a false dichotomy,” said Michael Zimmerman, dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and the major organizer of the letter project.

Mr. Zimmerman said more than 10,000 ministers had signed the letter, which states, in part, that the theory of evolution is “a foundational scientific truth.” To reject it, the letter continues, “is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children.”

“We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator,” the letter says.

There are nuances in the descriptions a scientist might quibble over, but the article’s approach is quite reasonable.

And this morning, Rudoren herself has a mediocre article on the rapid collapse of “intelligent design”, mere mediocrity being quite an improvement for her. Rudoren does a pretty good job summarizing how quickly “intelligent design” is collapsing:

A majority of members on the Board of Education of Ohio, the first state to single out evolution for “critical analysis” in science classes more than three years ago, are expected on Tuesday to challenge a model biology lesson plan they consider an excuse to teach the tenets of the disputed theory of intelligent design.

A reversal in Ohio would be the most significant in a series of developments signaling a sea change across the country against intelligent design — which posits that life is too complex to be explained by evolution alone — since a federal judge’s ruling in December that teaching the theory in the public schools of Dover, Pa., was unconstitutional.

A small rural school district in California last month quickly scuttled plans for a philosophy elective on intelligent design after being challenged by lawyers involved in the Pennsylvania case. Also last month, an Indiana lawmaker who said in November that he would introduce legislation to mandate teaching of intelligent design instead offered a watered-down bill requiring only “accuracy in textbooks.” And just last week, two Democrats in Wisconsin proposed a ban on schools’ teaching intelligent design as science, the first such proposal in the country.

Unfortunately, Rudoren wastes space, and the reader’s time, passing on a stupid quote from the Christian Reconstructionist beard group, the Discovery Institute, without correction or comment. This is just one of several faux-balance quotes that maintain the fraud that there actually is a legitimate controversy over “intelligent design.”

Still, it’s something of an improvement from her Grand Canyon days.

If It Ain’t Broke

by digby

Three former associates of Jack Abramoff said Monday that the now-disgraced lobbyist frequently told them during his lobbying work he had strong ties to the White House through presidential confidant Karl Rove.

The White House said Monday that Rove remembers meeting Abramoff at a 1990s political meeting and considered the lobbyist a “casual acquaintance” since President Bush took office in 2001.

[…]

Abramoff was a $100,000 fundraiser for Bush and lobbying records obtained by the AP show his lobbying team logged nearly 200 meetings with the administration during its first 10 months in office on behalf of one of his clients, the Northern Mariana Islands.

The contacts between Abramoff’s team and the administration included meetings with Attorney General John Ashcroft and policy advisers to Vice President Dick Cheney, the AP reported last year.

Abramoff’s former assistant, Susan Ralston, went to work for Rove in 2001. Abramoff’s legal team declined comment Monday night.

[…]

Asked about the three former Abramoff associates’ account, the White House said Rove shared a common past with Abramoff as leaders of a young Republicans group decades ago.

“Mr. Rove remembers they had met at a political event in the 1990s,” White House spokeswoman Erin Healy said. “Since then, he would describe him as a casual acquaintance.”

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but that reminds me of something. Darn it. I hate when that happens.

Oh well. In other news, I see that Kennyboy Lay’s trial proceeds apace.

Oh right:

When Governor Bush—now President Bush—decided to run for the governor’s spot, [there was] a little difficult situation—I’d worked very closely with Ann Richards also, the four years she was governor. But I was very close to George W. and had a lot of respect for him, had watched him over the years, particularly with reference to dealing with his father when his father was in the White House and some of the things he did to work for his father, and so did support him.”

—Interview with Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay for Frontline’s 2001 documentary, “Blackout: What Caused the Power Crisis in California? And Who’s Profiting?”

[…]

“I got to know Ken Lay when he was the head of the—what they call the Governor’s Business Council in Texas. He was a supporter of Ann Richards in my run in 1994 … And she had named him the head of the Governor’s Business Council. And I decided to leave him in place, just for the sake of continuity. And that’s when I first got to know Ken. …”

—President George W. Bush, answering reporters’ questions in the Oval Office Jan. 10.

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What A Shame

by digby

I didn’t have a dog in the Hackett Brown fight, but I can’t help but be disappointed that Hackett is checking out. That man has the shinin’ and we have precious little of that in Democratic circles. I have to think that the powers that be may have failed to comprehend that some people have to be dealt with differently than your average pol. That’s why they call them “authentic” and it’s important to handle them like the thoroughbreds they are. They are always high maintenance, like most stars, but they are very, very useful in projecting an appealing national image for the party. Ask the best bet to be the Republican nominee in 2008: John McCain.

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Dispatches From The Fever Swamp

by digby

Jason Zengerle over at the Plank gives Mickey Kaus props for being wrong and then discusses every Joementum Democrat’s favorite new theme: the “fever swamp” of the liberal blogosphere. He quotes Kaus:

Much of Democratic politics seems to now consist of embracing and fanning similarly comforting, but ultimately deceptive, liberal memes. Enron has fatally damaged Bush, Abu Ghraib has fatally damaged Bush, Katrina has fatally damaged Bush, Abramoff has fatally damaged Bush, the Plame investigation will fatally damage Bush–you can catch the latest allegedly devastating issue every day on Huffington Post or Daily Kos (and frequently in the NYT).

And then adds:

I’d add a few other suspects to that last. But I think Kaus is on to something here. The drip-drip-drip of scandals and screw-ups should, collectively, take a toll on the Bush administration. But liberal bloggers have too often viewed and hyped each individual scandal as a silver bullet; and when that bullet misses–picking off, say, Scooter Libby instead of Karl Rove–they inevitably experience a letdown, and simply move onto the next supposed silver bullet, failing to capitalize on what, were it not for their unrealistically inflated expectations, would have been considered a significant scandal.

That is a very interesting observation and it makes me quite proud to be part of the liberal blogosphere. It means we are doing our jobs. The president’s approval rating is stuck at around 40% and I think it’s pretty clear that it isn’t the reporting in the mainstream media or by the “reasonable” Democrats at the New Republican that brought that about. If left up to them the Republicans would be coasting to another easy re-election.

I don’t say this because I think that liberal blogs are taking over the world and have changed the face of politics as we know it. I say it because I know that without us there would have been virtually no critical voices during the long period between 2001 and the presidential primary campaign during 2003. We were it. The media were overt, enthusiastic Bush boosters for well over two years and created an environment in which Democratic dissent (never welcome) was non-existent to the average American viewer. In fact, it took Bush’s approval rating falling to below 40% before they would admit that he was in trouble.

I believe that if it had not been for the constant underground drumbeat from the fever swamps over the past five years, when the incompetence, malfeasance and corruption finally hit critical mass last summer with the bad news from Iraq, oil prices and Katrina, Bush would not have sunk as precipitously as he did and stayed there. It literally took two catasprophes of epic proportions to break the media from its narrative of Bush’s powerful leadership. And this after two extremely close elections —- and the lack of any WMD in Iraq.

Kevin Drum and Atrios both have featured posts today highlighting new data about about the dearth of liberal voices in the mainstream media. From Paul Waldman’s article in the Washington Monthly:

This ideological imbalance isn’t only evident in the “official” sources that are interviewed: the elected officials, candidates, and administration officials who make up most of the shows’ guests. It is even clearer in the roundtable discussions with featured journalists, [where] it has been a frequent practice for a roundtable to consist of a right-wing columnist or two supposedly “balanced” by journalists from major newspapers.

….The consequence of all this is that in every year since 1997, conservative journalists have dramatically outnumbered liberal journalists, in some years by two-to-one or more. Why would the producers of the shows believe that a William Safire (56 appearances since 1997) or Bob Novak (37 appearances) is somehow “balanced” by a Gwen Ifill (27) or Dan Balz (22)? It suggests that some may have internalized the conservative critique of the media, which assumes that daily journalists are “liberal” almost by definition, and thus can provide a counterpoint to highly partisan conservative pundits.

Yes, it does suggest that. We in the fever swamps have observed this phenomenon for many years so it comes as no surprise to us. The liberal point of view has pretty much disappeared from the mainstream discourse. And yet, if one were to poll the grassroots, one would find that their views are not out of the mainstream at all. Indeed, on many more issues than not, we are in line with the vast majority of Americans.

And as much as we are unsurprised to see that the statistics bear out our observations that liberals aren’t represented on news programs, neither are we surprised that right wing talk radio, right wing publishing and right wing cable news dominate the media and that we have nothing like it on our side. This is why we shake our heads in wonder when David Brooks says there are more “nuts” on our side or that we insist upon “Stalinist” discipline. (Ask Bruce Bartlett about Stalinist discipline.)

Rush Limbaugh gets paid 25 million dollars a year to say things like this:

OK, folks, I think I got enough information here to tell you about the contents of this fax that I got. Brace yourselves. This fax contains information that I have just been told will appear in a newsletter to Morgan Stanley sales personnel this afternoon…. What it is is a bit of news which says…there’s a Washington consulting firm that has scheduled the release of a report that will appear, it will be published, that claims that Vince Foster was murdered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton, and the body was then taken to Fort Marcy Park.

This is, of course, the same Rush Limbaugh who interviews the Vice President on his show.

And while it is true that the producers of news programs may have internalized the “liberal” media meme and therefore book journalists who are required to be as objective as possible to spar with overt Republlican partisans, the greater problem is that the journalists themselves internalize the criticism and go out of their way to avoid being called liberal. This also explains journalists’ somewhat overheated hostility to liberal bloggers: they have a target to prove to conservatives that they aren’t liberals after all.

I actually think this is a good thing. We bloggers can take it. We’re openly partisan and extremely aggressive. We aren’t right wingers so we don’t have their natural gift for organized top-down character assassination, but we have our own methods and we are learning. The mainstream media are, for the first time in memory, being pulled by both sides of the ideological spectrum. And maybe, just maybe, we might just save them in spite of themselves.

I have written before about this and made it clear that I do not wish to destroy the mainstream media. I do not believe that this country can do without a credible press. But after waiting in vain for more than a decade for the press to shake off its torpor and exert its perogatives as the fourth estate, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that our (and their) only hope was to join the fray and pull as hard as we can on the opposite end of the rope.

I see that the press does not know what to make of this. And I see that many Joementum Democrats don’t get it either. They remain convinced that the country will wake up one day and see that our arguments are superior. They are wrong. This political era will be remembered for its brutal partisanship and sophisticated media manipulation in a 50/50 political environment. Democrats have been at a huge disadvantage because of the Republican message infrastructure and the strange servility of the mainstream press. So, we are pushing back with the one tough, aggressive partisan communication tool we have: the blogosphere.

The mainstream press is going to have to get used to us because we aren’t going anywhere. I suspect they are actually somewhat relieved that somebody on our side has stepped up to take the slings and arrows of the vast right wing conspiracy and provide them with some cover. (No need to thank us. Just report the truth.)

Joementum Dems, on the other hand, need to recognize that we are in a partisan time and that requires a partisan strategy. We are going to hit them hard every time they repeat Republican talking points and otherwise enable the opposition to dominate the media discourse. There is no more room for bipartisan gestures that only benefit the GOP side of the equation. David Gergen said yesterday on This Weak that Republicans are much better at message than Democrats but they aren’t so good at governing. Nobody knows this better than those of in the grassroots who have been forced to watch this trainwreck from the sidelines for more than a decade. It’s why Bush is at 39% today and yet there is no guarantee that Democrats will win in the fall or any sense in the media that the Republican Party has failed. We cannot afford any more Democratic complicity with Republican memes and we are going to work against those who do it.

It’s a new day. We angry denizens of the fever swamps have emerged from the slime to fight back. We couldn’t wait any longer for the professionals to get the job done. At the rate they’re going we’d be extinct within the decade.

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Do The Hustle

by digby

Scottie is making things much worse than they already were. He keeps saying that it took all that time to “gather the facts” and that their priority was to “help the victim.” I guess we’re supposed to believe that Cheney was so busy monitoring the man’s vital signs that he couldn’t pick up as phone and tell anybody what happened until the following morning.

Apparently, it took 12 hours to inform even McClellan that Cheney was the shooter. Both Card and Rove were involved very early. And Big Dick himself is said to have spoken to Armstrong about releasing it to her local paper, contrary to what she already said. A rather crude and bizarre press strategy for this group wouldn’t you say? Why?

McClellan said that he knew about the shooting the evening it happened but didn’t know until the next morning that it was Cheney. Asssuming he’s telling the truth, I think it’s fair to assume that they spent about 12 hours deciding whether Cheney or “someone else” actually fired the gun. I can’t think of any other (believable) reason they would have waited — unless there’s even more to this story than we already know.

And how about that little bit about the deputy down in Texas who was told to back off asking any questions by the Secret Service? What’s up with that?

developing super duper hardlike….

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Sourpuss

the digby

The Republicans really hate this shooting story. Hate it. The future ex Mrs Rush Limbaugh looks like she just sucked a lemon as she reported that Cheney went postal over the week-end. It isn’t easy being a gargantuan right wing gasbag’s girlfriend and having to pretend that you are unbiased. Sometimes it’s impossible. She appeared to be barely able to keep her disgust in check contemplating what the comedians are going to say tonight.

So get your jokes on, moonbats. Let’s torture us some wingnuts.

Just to get you started, here are the Top Ten Cheney Excuses For Shooting that Guy, courtesy DallasDem at Kos.

Update:

Then again, they aren’t really quick enough to know a joke when they see one. I wrote this yesterday and Hilzoy over at Obsidion Wings did a fine riff on it last night. Sadly, it was a little bit too subtle for the folks apparently. I won’t say it…

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Cheney’s Law

by tristero

Always blame the victim:

“This all happened pretty quickly,” Ms. Armstrong said in a telephone interview from her ranch. Mr. Whittington, she said, “did not announce — which would be protocol — ‘Hey, it’s me, I’m coming up,’ ” she said.

“He didn’t do what he was supposed to do,” she added, referring to Mr. Whittington. “So when a bird flushed and the vice president swung in to shoot it, Harry was where the bird was.”

Mr. Whittington was “sprayed — peppered, is what we call it — on his right side, on part of his face, neck, shoulder and rib cage,” she said, noting that she, too, had been sprayed on her leg in a hunting accident.

“A shotgun sprays a bunch of little bitty pellets; it’s not a bullet involved,”

Must news reporters always exaggerate and say Vice President Cheney “shot” someone? That’s just not true!

It’s not as if he actually fired a big bad bullet. Just little bitty pellets. Couldn’t harm a fly. And, good heavens, Harry wasn’t even “sprayed” with little bitty pellets. He was just peppered. You ever pepper steak tartare? Oh, dear, that wasn’t in good taste, was it? Tee hee!

Now run along like a good little girl and don’t you dare go talking to anyone else who was there. Just do what you’re supposed to do, write what I said, and you won’t get hurt. Like Harry.

Besides, my child, it was his own fault, now, wasn’t it?

Bad Jack

by digby

The Democratic Daily has a scoop. Here’s a taste:

There was a good Jack and a bad Jack. Most people today only know the bad Jack. I didn’t know that man at all. The Jack I knew was funny engaging and after hours he was decent and true to his beliefs. Apparently he had some misguided impression of how to influence government.

There is something terribly wrong with our nation’s capital.

Here’s a little more about “the bad Jack.”

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Edgy New Media

by digby

It was awfully good to see Jim Brady finally come forth with the scholarly, meditative disquisition about the effects of blogging on modern media for which we’ve all been waiting. We were in desperate need of some lucid, unimpassioned analysis of what happened in the Deborah Howell affair.

My career as a nitwitted, emasculated fascist began the afternoon of Jan. 19 when, as executive editor of the Post’s Web site, washingtonpost.com, I closed down the comments area of one of our many blogs, one called post.blog. Created primarily to announce new features on the Web site, the blog had become ground zero for angry readers complaining about a column by Post ombudsman Deborah Howell on the newspaper’s coverage of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. If I had let them, they would have obliterated any semblance of civil, genuine discussion.

As it was, things got pretty ugly, and it’s worth figuring out why. In her Jan. 15 column, Howell erred in saying that Abramoff gave campaign donations to Democrats as well as Republicans. In fact, Abramoff directed clients to give to members of both parties, but he had donated his own personal funds only to Republicans.

Howell’s inadvertent error prompted a handful of bloggers to urge their readers to go to post.blog to vent their discontent, and in the subsequent four days we received more than a thousand comments in our public forum. Only, the word “comments” doesn’t convey the obscene, vituperative tone of a lot of the postings, which were the sort of things you might find carved on the door of a public toilet stall. About a hundred of them had to be removed for violating the Post site’s standards, which don’t allow profanity or personal attacks.

To my dismay, matters only got worse on Jan. 19 after Howell posted a clarification on washingtonpost.com. Instead of mollifying angry readers, the clarification prompted more than 400 additional comments over the next five hours, many of them so crude as to be unprintable in a family newspaper. Soon the number of comments that violated our standards of Web civility overwhelmed our ability to get rid of them; only then did we decide to shut down comments on the blog.

So was I suppressing free speech? Protecting the Bush administration? That’s what you’d think, judging by the swift and acid reaction to my move. They couldn’t get to post.blog, but they sure let me have it elsewhere in the blogosphere. I was honored as “Wanker of the Day” on one left-wing blog. Another site dissected my biography in order to prove that I was part of The Post’s vast right-wing conspiracy.

It’s so refreshing, isn’t it, to see real journalism in action instead of the snide, snippy attitude displayed so often by sophomoric bloggers?

Now contrast that dry piece of expository writing with this wild, insane drivel written by one of the bloggers Brady so justifiably takes to task in his article: (From Alternet, naturally.)

When Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell published the false claim on Jan. 15 that Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave money to Democrats, the paper got a loud, swift and public lesson in the new realities of online interactivity and instant accountability. It was like watching a woolly mammoth being hauled shrieking and dripping with ice-age detritus into the 21stt century.

This lesson came in large part from the blogosphere, in the form of comments made on the newspaper’s website and in posts made to political weblogs, such as DailyKos, Eschaton, and my own blog, Firedoglake. The collective daily readership of the largest political blogs now runs in the millions. We are news and politics junkies, instantly able to recite the last six jobs of Senate staffers and the names of reporters who cover every beat. We follow politics in real time and have zero tolerance for the kind of sloppy mistake Howell made. Hundreds of us swarmed to the site and immediately made our feelings known.

The paper’s insistence on remaining silent in the wake of this was a clear indication that management did not understand that the days of one-way “we speak, you listen” information flow are over. It is no longer possible for a newspaper to simply publish erroneous information and then stonewall critics as they wait for everything to blow over.

Mercy! Can’t someone put a muzzle on that crazy shrew? Can she not control her acid tongue and name calling even for a minute to explain her position? Apparently not. (Wooly Mammoths!!!? My God. Has she no decency? )

Unlike the wise, level-headed analysis you see in the first piece, here we have a writer who is so angry and hysterical she can’t even begin to explain her position.

In these two pieces we have seen the contrast: crazed, hysterical demagoguery based purely on one’s personal, emotional reaction to a story vs a sober, rational explanation of the events at hand. This is what separates “journalism” from “blogging.” Perhaps someone would like to invite Mr Brady to the next blogger ethics panel to show us how it’s done.

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