Windbag Reloaded

The second installment of Editor & Publisher editor Greg Mitchell's anti-blog frenzy is out today.  I noted yesterday that E&P decries the "freewheeling atmosphere" of the blogosphere, noting bloggers take part in "speculative, unfounded, or politically-driven charges".

Despite the many and ongoing blog-based discoveries of doctored war photographs, scenes of manufactured horrors staged among rubble piles, and blatantly misleading captions accompanying otherwise unsensational images, Mitchell is highly perturbed by what he feels is an "an anti-media propaganda war" perpetrated by right-wing bloggers.

A "propaganda war"?

Mitchell doesn't seem to be able to get past the fact that bloggers have political ideologies that drive the kinds of stories they post about.  Of course they do.  And they wear them on their sleeves.  It's that transparency that seems to irk Mitchell so much - perhaps because their honesty about their viewpoints is largely that which sets blogs apart from traditional media outlets.  In any case, the idea that bloggers have political viewpoints is, to Mitchell, damning enough to render any MSM fraud they uncover (however true and egregious it may be) to be irrelevant, particularly when the point that a given photographer or journalist was driving at is - in his, her, or Mitchell's opinion - still valid, despite the fraud.

Of course we first saw this "fake but accurate" defense hurled awkwardly in response to the Rathergate forgeries.  The point being driven at was still valid (er, was still one the media wanted to make, whether or not the evidence was any good), so proving these exhibits to be fakes was incidental.  Rather than rebutting the agenda-driven story, and rather than exposing numerous media standard bearers to have be sloppy and/or complicit with, if not perpetrators of such fraud, the only effect of these ongoing exposures is - if we are to believe Mr. Mitchell - to illustrate the doggedly anti-MSM tendencies among bloggers.

This is apparently so damnable a supposition that any documentary evidence of malfeasance that such individuals may produce is to be summarily discarded.

Meanwhile of course, the traditional media is to suffer no such aspersions, despite not only a pronounced aggregate bias, but also the plain - occasionally deliberate - failure to present unfiltered or even undoctored evidence.

I truly don't understand why Mitchell would seek to make this argument, when a perfectly respectable, far less ridiculous point could be made along the lines of, "These forgeries are a terrible disgrace on the journalistic tradition.  The vast majority of people in the business hold themselves to a higher standard.  These instances tend to get a lot of press because they're quite sensational, but they represent a serious problem and we should all work together to try to make our news gathering process more robust to avoid such problems in the future."

Attacking the attackers does nothing to minimize the significance of or excuse these deliberate and dishonest acts and, in my opinion, only serves to show the public that institutions among traditional media - certainly E&P - prize loyalty among their ranks over their ostensible mission to report the news fairly and objectively.

As with the first installment, Hot Air has capably dissected Mitchell's second round of fraud-apologist blogbashing.

Previously:
Hot Air Takes On MSM Windbag
Would I Lie To You?

Elsewhere:
Confederate Yankee
Michelle Malkin