Part of what both you and 'Who tends the Fires' are saying indirectly is that:

The media types have personal contacts going back decades which were deliberately set up with a mind towards being able to ask favors in a wide swath of fields.

The blogosphere has contacts... but not primarily being focused on original research, the contacts are less widespread (per blogger). Phil was a cold-call, yes?

And there's been issues at the fringes that don't reflect well on the blogosphere because even collectively there's clearly no omniscience. The wrong Robert Strong was tracked down by a LOT of people (according to his post in the Miami Herald). A lot of angry people ringing you - who are perfectly innocent - at all hours isn't conducive to, well, a positive impression.

Yes, all that and more. Let me give you another example: I can't express to you how annoying it was to field e-mails from so many people that contradicted my expert's testimony based on their personal research of typefaces, a topic that they'd never really considered before that day.

Reporters have varying standards, but most try to assemble evidence, much like a prosecutor in a criminal case. In contrast, many bloggers are lazy and often simply like to opine, disregarding what standard of credibility may be necessary to convince those with opposite leanings.

Look at the left-right reaction to the memos; even LGF's visual didn't convince the lefties over at Daily Kos, because it contradicted their self-interest. Only an overwhelming balance of experts would break through to them.

Bill, there's still an AMAZING amount of denial over there. Using 'debunking' info that has itself been debunked for a full week at this point.

LGF didn't convince them... and it has them obsessing on 1001 ways this "couldn't be Word". Which is silly - I don't care if you _can_ prove it wasn't Word, you can't prove it wasn't Photoshopped. Today's tools aren't the issue. That particular meme just won't soak in anywhere for some reason. ;)

This is a perfect response to some things that are happening elsewhere in the blogosphere today. The fact that I believe Bill honestly attempts to live up to the concept expressed in "This is a lesson: professional rules and accountability are still important;" is the main reason I consider his site one of the most important (Sorry Bill, I still read Geraghty first, but I do read you second).

I believe that the blogosphere has a right to celebrate it's role in danron, much as the Minutemen might have hoisted a few at some Lexington night spot, but it was only the first shot in a war that continues to this day, the war for freedom. In order to be free we must have responsible, ethical journalist disseminating information to an educated and caring public.

The Supreme Court in 1964, decided the bar to libel was "that the publisher knows the statement is false or acts in reckless disregard of the truth.", I believe CBS News got a perfect 2 out of 2 on that standard, but I believe there are a lot of blogs that score about the same. This site has gone above and beyond to ensure that it conducts itself properly as one of the new standard bearer's in the war for truth, and I commend Bill.

Thanks.

- One of the more interesting vanishing act "scoops" by that dauntless cabal of jounalistic Robodupes at CBS involved the hapless Israeli pentagon office worker of a few weeks ago. After a day or two of loud screeches of traitorous spying activities run amok in the halls of US military planning it seems that particular bombshell boinked so fast it might as well have been typed in dissappearing ink. It wasn't apparent which brick wall CBS hit in that case that so completely damped their ardor. What was amusing, after the smoke died down, was the comments of a Pentagon official who quiped "[If] someone was caught with their hand in the Pentagon filing cabinets you can bet it would be the FBI or the DC police serving the subpeona's and making the arrests and not the CBS building security guards"...

It seems to me, and I'm no journalistic historian, that the MSM news outlets have been losing large amounts of viewers and readers. At the same time the acendency of talk radio began. And now the acendency of interent based information is occuring. During all this the reporters of MSM outlets knew that they were losing people, but they ascribed it to apathy. This is because they are arrogant.

The truth is a large number of people have gotten more and more fed up with their crap. Even people who aren't newhounds by any stretch recognize the BS. They just turned it off and never looked for a new source. The newhounds found other outlets. During that time the MSM lamented how they can't do any real investigative journalism because no one cares anymore. Wrong no cares about your crap anymore MSM.

Fox news understands this. It is why they are not all over this story. Their attitude is let them slit their own throats and we will reap the rewards. They don't really look into this because they know the damage was done long ago.

But this is a turning point. Not because now people know about blogs. That was just accelerated. It is a turning point because the massive denial of MSM has a chink in it. Goliath was forced to take notice David. So I warn you now; beware, they will try to discredit people like Bill, PowerLine, LGF, Allah, et al. You are in their way and they clearly have little regard for such people. Again it may not be a conscious attempt but you disagree with their ideology and therefore are cooks. At the same time they will try to assimilate. Do not be surprised if you start seeing Kos on TV and not a Powerliner.

On the bright side Fox news has it right, unless they make a real effort at fairness they are doomed. At least I think so.

The really scary part of this whole lesson is to consider how many stories in the past have been reported as fact when they might have been subject to just this sort of chicanery, and there was no blogosphere to raise questions.

How many sources have been interviewed and ignored (like Killian's family) and then, when the story broke, were ignored because they were just private citizens against the big Eye Network?

Hear, hear, bryan.
CBS news has revealed their standard method of operation and it's not pretty. The idea that this is an "isolated incident" is as absurd as the memos. That IS scary.

What can I say, Bill? Someone has to take the paranoid's eye view. ;)

"Bill, there's still an AMAZING amount of denial over there. Using 'debunking' info that has itself been debunked for a full week at this point.

LGF didn't convince them... and it has them obsessing on 1001 ways this "couldn't be Word"." - Al

Yup. Definately. Thing is, you can compartmentalise the DKos and DU fanatics here, just as you can compartmentalise the fanatic libertarian and rightist partisans on other issues. Big media gets their bread and butter not from the rabid partisans, it's Joe Sixpack that they watch for views and ratings. It's Joe Sixpack they don't want to lose the credulity of...

What made this a rude shock to Rather and media on the whole was the obviousness of the thing: the LGF overlay was *blatant*. Doesn't matter how much spin you pour on it, common sense tells someone looking at it that there's something fishy - even if they don't know much about typefaces and typography.

The partisans on both extremes are going to find ways to rationalise around anything, but when they start to lose the credibility with laymen and moderates, that's deadly to them. Keep in mind, the rabid partisans over at DKos also aren't convincing anyone but themselves...

What Bryan just stated is the crux of the matter: his is a question that MSM doesn't need people asking. Because, simply, once the suspension of disbelief is broken, there's no real answer to it. ABC, CNN, BBC, et al can swear they've never done it on a story, but they can't prove they never have.

Once it takes hold, that doubt infects every story they've ever done, and every story fom now on. It's no wonder that Rather is toxic right now. ;]

By the way, Bill: I'm not taking anything away from you and Powerline and everyone - I want to stress that.

Ya'll did one hell of a job on this stuff. Salud! ;]

In this case, I do think that the LGF overlay was the most powerful statemnt, but it wasn't the initial statement. And I still think that "experts" are what pushes the media's buttons. It was all pretty devastating.

Your post was excellent, btw.

Curiously, I have not found the expert's backpedaling collected in any one place. (Maybe I have not looked long enough.) Here is a compendium, after an hour's work online:

Collection of Expert Retractions & Criticism

CBS has identified four document or handwriting “experts” who were consulted prior to the broadcast.

The following are quotes, or media reports, regarding either the fraud concerns each professional rendered to CBS, or the limited scope of their review, rendering their opinions somewhat irrelevant to the issue of forgery.

This is all sourced off of internet research; I have provided all sources.

Emily Will.

Emily Will is a professional document examiner in North Carolina consulted by CBS to help assess two memos related to Bush's military service. Will was first contacted by CBS News on Sept. 3.

"They said they had some documents, some sensitive documents, and would I mind working over the Labor Day weekend," Will said in an interview. "They wanted to know whether the signatures were genuine and the documents were genuine."

She said her copies showed a fax footer with a time stamp that read 6:41 p.m. Sept. 2. The header of the fax, which presumably showed information about the sender, referred to a Kinko's shop near Abilene, Texas.

Will said she found "serious problems" with the documents. She isolated five ways in which the Killian signature on a 1973 memo did not match up with the other provided samples of his handwriting. She also wondered whether the memos contained superscripts and proportional spacing that existed in 1972 and '73, although she emphasized that her expertise mainly concerned handwriting and signatures and not the finer points of typography.

On Sept. 5, Will sent notations on the memos to CBS via e-mail and also voiced her concerns to a CBS producer over the phone. The producer said they had more material to send her, but Will said those additional documents never arrived

All these discrepancies "looked like trouble to me," Will said, adding that she told CBS this "in a resounding way."

Asked about Will's written concerns, CBS News Senior Vice President Betsy West said: "The only e-mail we received raised some preliminary points about the handwriting, which [CBS's] other experts addressed and ruled out."
CBS began to doubt Will because she started expanding her role and doing Google searches about Bush's whereabouts at the time, said an executive who insisted on anonymity because the network did not want to go beyond the official statements. But Will said she was merely doing research into whether superscript existed in 1972.

When time passed and Will heard nothing, she called CBS News the night of Sept. 7. She said she told her contact - whom she declined to name - "If you run this story, you'll get all sorts of questions from hundreds of document examiners." Will declined to say what if any reply CBS gave to her warning.

The Washington Post phrased the same story as follows: "What I was finding was a lot of red flags.” She said she listed five concerns in an e-mail three days before last Wednesday's broadcast and that in a call to a producer the day before the program, "I repeated all my objections as strongly as I could." Will said she told the producer: "If you air the program on Wednesday, on Thursday you're going to have hundreds of document examiners raising the same questions."

CBS News Senior Vice President Betsy West was quoted in the Washington Post saying, "I'm not aware of any substantive objection she [Will] raised. Emily Will did not urge us to hold the story. She was not adamant in any way. At one point she raised a concern about a superscript 'th,' which we then discussed with the other experts we hired to examine all four of the documents we aired. We were assured the 'th' was consistent with technology at the time, an assessment that has since been backed up by other experts."

Will disputes the contention by CBS that she deferred to the judgment of other document experts. Will said she could not be 100 percent certain about her findings and had recommended other analysts.

[Emily Will sources: Washington Post, and ]

Linda James.

Linda James of Plano, Texas, was first contacted by CBS News on Sept. 3.

James said she examined two disputed Killian memos and found "they were structurally different" from a Killian document released by the Pentagon. James said she questioned differences in the signing of the "J" of Killian's first name, to the point of wondering whether the lieutenant colonel had health issues that would have affected his writing. She said she also told CBS that she questioned whether the superscript could have been produced on a Vietnam War-era typewriter.

In a telephone interview [with the Washington Post] , Linda James said that she told CBS the documents "had problems" and that she had questioned "whether they were produced on a computer."

James told CBS producers she was troubled that she was looking at only copies and not originals. "[I] described what I needed in order to go ahead with the examination," James said. CBS promised it would send more paperwork, but according to James it never arrived.

Given these concerns, James said, she was surprised that "60 Minutes" went ahead with the story. James disputes the contention by CBS that she had deferred to the judgment of other document experts. James said she could not be 100 percent certain about her findings and had recommended other analysts.

"We knew it was a rush job. They wanted to air [the story] by Wednesday night," James said.

Asked whether CBS took her concerns seriously, James said: "Evidently not."

CBS News Senior Vice President Betsy West was quoted in the Washington Post saying, "As far as I know, Linda James raised no objections. She said she'd have to see more documents to render a judgment."
[James Sources: and

Marcel B. Matley . Marcel B. Matley, a handwriting expert from San Francisco, signed a letter saying he found "nothing about the documents that could disprove their authenticity."

But, he told The Washington Post on September 12 that although he vouched for the signature of Bush's former squadron commander, the late Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, there was "no way" he could authenticate Killian's purported memos because they were copies.

Matley’s written opinion letter, dated a week after the broadcast, does not authenticate the documents, nor that Killian wrote them. It states, “The preponderance of the available handwriting evidence is that one writer made all signatures examined.”

This curious, too-narrow letter seems to certify that a single forger made the documents.

Matley italicized one phrase in his opinion: “the available handwriting evidence.” An obvious signal that his review was incomplete?

A judge would not allow this opinion into evidence, for numerous reasons, all based upon the common sense notion that Matley won’t vouch for it.

Matley’s letter is at:

[Matley Sources: and ]

James J. Pierce. And James J. Pierce, a forensic examiner from Newport Beach, also signed a letter to CBS, vouching for the signatures and typeface in the documents. The letter is the strongest opinion in favor of the “authenticity” of the documents.

He opines that the “signatures are consistent”, the type face used are strongly similar to samples, and that the documents are authentic.

Pierce’s letter is at:

National Review Online has posted what might be the tip of an iceberg, in the eventual (inevitable?) deconstruction of Pierce’s work. Citing work regarding an article-in-progress by columnist Gary Moon of the Athens, Ga. Banner-Herald, “Pierce seemed upset that CBS is using his ‘Professional Opinion’ memo of 9/14 to prop up their defense about the Killian memos being authentic. Pierce said “CBS is wrong, CBS is wrong” to portray it that way, saying it twice for emphasis. He said that his PO memo was only a preliminary judgment, “not a final conclusion” on all the documents…. Pierce said that the reason he hadn't rendered a final conclusion yet was that he was only “midway through his analysis” of all the documents - speaking as though there were many docs. CBS gave you other documents besides the four that 60 Minutes used in the story? “Lots more documents” were his exact words.”

So, more to come re: Pierce from Gary Moon, at:

The Gary Moon/NRO piece is at:

I guess URL's don't post here. In my last post, I set forth the Washington Post, L.A. Times, CBS News and other online sources from which I culled the information

Links should work ...

Bill,
I've lived in the DC area for nearly 30 years. For many years, I was a die-hard Redskins' fan. Unfortunately, after a little more than 10 years I just got tired of the way the 'Skins would get cocky about their winning and end up losing in the stupidest way games they should have easily won.

Good thing you realize your limitations early; don't get cocky, and they can't bring you down.

I, too, like the idea of bloggers as the watchdogs of the MSM, not their replacement (g).

But Gibbs is back, come on man!

You wrote:

“Bloggers have a new, entrenched status as fifth estate that checks the media with open-source journalism and withering punditry and analysis, but we can't live without them.
We need the MSM, and we need the MSM to follow its rules.”

I think that this is, frankly, a narrow and limited way of looking at the developments of the past year or two. I don’t think it makes sense to divide the landscape into these two distinct classes, like the Brahmin and the sub-brahmin or something, each with its own job and its own class rules. This is the guild notion of journalism and I think that because we all grew up with it we can’t easily give it up. But I think the rise of the blogosphere has shown that the guild notion of journalism is dead. Instead, we have a new, open, competitive marketplace. Each blogger, like each journalist (and the distinction will soon be semantic at best, if not altogether meaningless) rises and falls on his or her own merits; specifically: trusthworthiness, accuracy, connectedness. In the Founders era there were thousands of “journalists” – anybody with access to a printing press could produce a newspaper, or at least a flyer. Were most of these flyers scurrilous rubbish? Yes. Did they libel and perpetrate fraud? Some, yeah, you betchya. And yet the Republic survived and flourished. It is only in the late twentieth century that America had an “official” mainstream media, made up of a small handful of newspaper and television networks, run by a relatively small group of people, localized in three or four major metropolitan areas. There is nothing inherently good or permanent about that – regardless of whether or not they are following their own guild rules.

It seems to me that the market is a much better arbiter of who is or who isn’t a respect-worthy journalist than an insular guild and its rules. Referring again to the Founders era, in those days, it took a long time before the marketplace could know that publisher X was reliable and decent, whereas publisher Y was a scurrilous liar. But eventually the marketplace did and still does figure it out. We don’t “need the MSM to follow its rules” – we don’t need the MSM period. The MSM needs audience, and it needs its audience to trust it. The simple word for this is ‘reputation’. Reputation is what we now refer to as mainstream journalists took decades to build up (and some are now, apparently, recklessly squandering). Just in the past couple of years, certain bloggers have also built up strong reputations for trustworthiness and accuracy. This is the currency of the Internet economy. Publishers that cannot be trusted and relied upon will not succeed, except to the degree that they have partisan or entertainment value. We don’t know what the future holds, but we shouldn’t assume that it needs to look anything like what we have had in recent decades. Media companies could, for example, morph into research/investigation services for journalists who operate in an entirely freelance environment. Or Journalists/Bloggers could spontaneously form ad-hoc groupings when they need to aggregate resources (the breaking of the Rather story was entirely spontaneous and ad-hoc and required no centralized rule-following agency). The “resources” of large media companies often consists of young people doing research, stringers making calls and knocking on doors, and so forth. In other words: people, people with networks that they can call upon to find stuff out. And that is exactly what the blogosphere is.

So let’s hold off on the entrenching and the rule making, and let the marvelous phenomena that people like F. A. Hayek described so well operate freely. After all, freedom is what we’re all about, right?

David -

"Each blogger, like each journalist (and the distinction will soon be semantic at best, if not altogether meaningless) rises and falls on his or her own merits; specifically: trusthworthiness, accuracy, connectedness."

This was the sentiment that I think is unrealistic.

Is it possible that a blogger can become a respected journalist by establishing a track record? Certainly, and I'm not establishing hard and fast rules.

But I want you to go look at the top of the blogger ranking system at a site like Daily Kos, where the author peddles pure political spin, often didinformation and revels in the death of Americans in Fallujah, and then please tell me,how that is an example of market forces guaranteeing some level of accountability?

Bill

Bill, that is an excellent point. But I counter with Josh Marshall or Kevin Drum. Marshall is just as partisan as Kos, but because on some level he wants to establish journalist bonafides (despite the stupid title of his blog), he is willing to admit the obvious truth - and get pummelled by his partisan readers for it. Kos, on the other hand, is willing to go down with the ship, in order to molify the rabid and hold on to his 'core'. Drum, likewise, appears to be willing to acknowledge the obvious truth - also to the shock of his more rabidly partisan readers. The next time something interesting happens, Kos' comments will be viewed through the prism of his 'reporting' this past week and discounted accordingly. Marshall and Drum will be one notch more legitimate. Another example would be Glenn Reynolds; even though leftists hate him, they understand that he's not going to lie or point them to wrong information. Glenn appears to get as many visitors from the left as he does the right, because he has built up (in an incredibly short time) a reputation for legitimacy.

These things take time. But luckily for us, the process has been accelerated exponentially by the speed of the Internet. Whereas once upon a time it might take years for the media market to digest the relative values of different journalists, it now happens much faster. Also, because of the ease of entry, there is no barrier to new people entering the fray and pointing out - for instance - that one of the top guys is wrong. In the end, people need information that they can rely upon, and I just don't believe that any blogger/journalist can be consistently wrong and survive in this new landscape, unless, again, it is for strictly partisan/entertainment value (and there will always be lots of room for people like that, but they'll never become the "Murrows" of our society).

"Your post was excellent, btw." - Bill

Thanks. That's appreciated.

No, LGF's wasn't the origional bit of evidence, you're correct. I hope I didn't state that it was... like I noted in my PS, at least half of my essay was written in a dead heat right after I woke up. You can do some of your best writing that way - but it's easy to be imprecise sometimes before "enough coffee" kicks in. ;)

I tried to be clear that LGF's was the most layman compelling, whereas the wealth of expert information you, Powerline, and Allah provided was the most journalist compelling. Apologies if that point was fuzzy.

Those are two differnt things, working to two different audiences. As someone who worked in printing and layout extensively once, the expert dissections were what convinced me. For my relatives and friends who don't read blogs, and aren't experts, it was the Word overlay that was shown on several newscasts that convinced them - they know what Word docs look like, even if all the technicalese on kerning and proportional type causes them to glaze over.

Heh. Oh well... as I observed once: if it has to be expanded on, I dint rite it clear enuff. ;)

"Curiously, I have not found the expert's backpedaling collected in any one place. (Maybe I have not looked long enough.) Here is a compendium, after an hour's work online:" - Winemaker

Hrmm. Someone did do a timeline and a compendium of articles and all the evidence, posts, and expert backtracking etc, with links. They did it quite recently, so it may have been posted after you did yours...

I didn't save the url, or I'd link to it. Let me see if it's in my history someplace. If I can dig it up, I'll link it here.

"unless, again, it is for strictly partisan/entertainment value (and there will always be lots of room for people like that, but they'll never become the "Murrows" of our society)." - David

I'm kinda pleased by that, personally.

I link to and coment on articles I enjoy by bloggers I like reading, on whatever topics strike my fancy. And to news articles that amuse or entertain me. My sole rational being that if I think it's amusing, entertaining or thought provoking, my readers will enjoy it... and it seems that we're attracting a readership that has similar eclectic tastes, so it works. ;)

As much as the "New journalism" model when applied to blogging pleases, I'm not fond of it as a catch all: NOT everyone wants to be the Edward R. Murrow of Our Times. I think it's a mistake to try and categorise blodom solely as citizens media... it's a round hole, and blogging is a square peg.

Some of us are quite happy with being bards, or simply pundits. There's nothin wrong with being entertainers - we don't all have to do journalism.

We also contribute who only link and snicker. *smirk*

AH. Here you go, Winemaker: Ernest Miller's annotated timeline.

There's another similar one somewhere also, IIRC.

Thanks Ironbear. And apparently, some bloggers are already realizing that they've blown it as journalists, but still have value for entertainment:

http://instapundit.com/archives/017939.php

Either Kos is now calling himself 'satire' or Google news can't bring themselves to refer to him as 'news' or even 'blogger'