They really do not think they did anything wrong. -- GG

I admire your work, and I admire what you have written today, but I cannot go there with you, Glenn.

When it comes to acts like lying (through commission or omission), cheating, and stealing, we generally know we are lying, cheating and stealing at the time we do it. What we may not know, either as children or adults, are the acceptable situations in which it is OK to lie, cheat and steal. Being able to differentiate between choosing to tell a virtuous lie, a lie for the greater good, and an iniquitous lie, the lie for selfish reasons, is just another word for morality. Many of the beltway journalists chose to lie for all the wrong reasons.

Don't give them a free pass. I'm not saying to burn them at the stake. People make mistakes. A virtuous person will admit the mistake and try not to repeat it. A less than virtuous person will not admit it, even when caught, and will most certainly repeat it the next time opportunity presents itself. I'm not saying to grind their noses in it out of malice or revenge. I'm just saying, don't give them a free pass. Call them on every lie of commission or omission that they engage in. Don't let them pretend that they don't know what they are doing. Of course they know what they are doing. They just want you to say it's OK in order to make you complicit in their behavior. It is a rare point in history when Internet journalists like youself are in a position to hold mainstream journalists to account. You have a greater degree of public trust. Like many of them, you have not betrayed it. If you did not have the public trust and influence that you do, you would not be able to elicit defensive (and occasionally apologetic) responses from some of the leading journalists in the country. If you give them a pass, like children they will say, "Glenn said it was OK. And you know how trustworthy Glenn is. So it must be OK."

You can never know what is in a person's mind. Many beltway journalists live at the top of the political journalism food chain. They have power, influence, money and "fame" and these things have more influence on the choices they make, organizationally and individually, than most of them are willing to admit.

They rooted for what they perceived to be the winning side, knowing that they had a lot to lose by going against the majority consensus.

The best journalists are the ones who do their research and present their findings objectively and honestly, without lies and without fear. There was very little of that in the run-up to the war.

What I try hard to do is confine my criticisms to things that are rooted in empirical evidence, in demonstrable facts. I try not to speculate about things, especially free-form speculation, except when I make clear that's what I'm doing. -- GG

And that's why I keep coming here. Every day.

Glenn's preaching to the choir on this one, but hopefully a few presidential candidates (and newspaper owners and TV execs) will drop by to read his post.

Given that blogs are so viral and so widely read, any progressive presidential candidate who doesn't take advantage of them is working at a distinct disadvantage. Bloggers are not chumps. Most of them have already done important investigative journalism. They're where you go if you want to know what's really going on. They are the primary channel for progressive political dialogue.

FDL is a great site. They live blogged the Scooter Libby trial and everything leading up to it. It says a lot of good about Hilary Clinton that she went there. And Josh Marshall at TPM is the one who put the US attorney scandal on the front page of the MSM, not the other way around. And we also have Juan Cole who covers Iraq and the Middle East. He's the first place you go if you want to know what is really going on over there. And AMERICAblog was the one who exposed Jeff Gannon.

And there's Kos and Atrios and Hullabaloo and MyDD and Media Matters and Huffington. That doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. The list goes on and on.

God bless the Internet.

There are still a few sources of light on TV and in newspapers but nearly as many as there could (and should) be. I don't feel sorry for the MSM. The blogs didn't make them out to be entertainers as opposed to news. They did it to themselves.

Today's case in point:

Ham sandwich at school --> (i.e., leads to)--> Internet satire --> Fox News story --> Revised AP Wire story (didn't we just have this discussion?) --> Massive projection of hate from all over the place --> MSM ham sandwich and freedom fries news story of the day ala Fox

(I'm sure they think, like Rush usually does, that it's just the funniest darn thing.)

http://www.sunjournal.com/story/209231-3/LewistonAuburn/Ham_report_stirs_mess/