The only problem with this post Glenn, is that the tone will only serve to prevent the media from actually creating an outrage story over this. If any of them read this blog (and I imagine a few people we'd recognize in the media do), they'll resent being preemptively called out for hypocrisy (accurately) and to spite us, not do the story.

You mean I should speak more gently and with less hostility about the media, the way the right-wing media-haters do, and that way they will take suggestions more? That isn't how the media works.

I've written posts like this before, that receive ample attention, using the most neutral and fact-based tone about the media's imbalanced coverage of the right-wing and liberal blogosphere. I've written hundred-link posts that any reporter could take and turn into a long, well-documented story about the extremism that drives the rigth-wing blogosphere without having to do an iota of work. And the only anti-blog stories ever written are all about the mean, angry liberal blogosphere.

It's just an established fact at this point that there is a serious resistance to writing about what happens in the right-wing blogosphere. It's a problem - these stories are used as proxies to convey larger themes (look at all the sick, angry, vile hatred of Cheney on the "left wing blogs" which becomes "the Left" which becomes "Democrats").

So I don't want you to change what you're doing, I'm just saying it won't shock me if their reaction is "How rude of Greenwald to write this, not even giving us the benefit of the doubt. Well, to hell with his story, I'm not writing about it, I don't want him to have the satisfaction! Oooh look, Malkin called me a terrorist sympathizer, I better go slag Dailykos to prove her wrong..."

I really do understand your point, and your cynicism about this. I used to think that way, too -- "if you lay out a really fact-based case for journalists and just alert their attention to the story/contradiction/imbalance," they will see it and report on it" - out of laziness if nothing else. But it doesn't work.

They have been trained for a couple of decades to believe that (a) they are part of a profession burdened by a vast left-wing bias, (b) they are fundamentally unfair to conservatives, and (c) they have the obligation to constantly demonstrate how fair and professional they are by bashing liberals and "the left" and refraining from any stories that advance what they've been told are unfair stereotypes of the right (they are fueled by hate, approve of violence, etc.).

So a polite and neutral approach get you almost nowhere, because you're battling against institutionalized and deeply engrained perceptions. Loud, hostile, accusatory actions are, unforunately, the ones most likely to break through. Look at almost every instance where journalists have been forced to deal with complaints like this or stories like these and it almost invariably comes from bloggers and their readers pounding and attacking and screaming and pushing.

All of this commenting I'm doing reminded me to ask you if there was any progress on revamping the comments section here? You mentioned some hope of that shortly after starting at Salon, I recall.

Still working on that. A couple of readers designed Greasemonkey script which I passed on to Salon. I have no idea what Greasemonkey script is - and, honestly, I don't want to know, so need for anyone to chime in with an explanation unless they really want to - but it seeems to somehow enable all comments to open on one page. I'm waiting for Salon (which long insisted, I also suspected not entirely accurately, that it couldn't be done) to say what their reaction is to that script.

In my opinion, GG has chosen to write about an aspect of the KSM saga that seems most shallow, and least important.

I try not to write about topics unless I have something to say that isn't being said in 1,000 other places. I don't just try pick the Most Important Topic each day to write about. I also need to have something of interest to say about the topic, and if I don't, then I don't write about it, because I don't really want to take up people's time with posts filled with nothing but obvious points or cliches that one can find in virtually every other venue.

Having said that, it never ceases to amaze me how many people feel to understand the importance of how the media discusses various political movements and the tools they use to promote their ideas.

The theme that the "Left" (as always, meaning: Those who oppose the Bush movement and its various ideological appendges) is filled with angry, radical, demented hippie figures evocative of those who attacked the police and burned cars in 1968 is a powerful image designed to make that movement radioactive and unattactive. The converse -- that the Right is filled with responsible and serious figures and the only instances of extremism occur at its inconsequential fringes -- achieves the opposite effect.

Finding examples to demonstrate the falsity of that narrative is extremely important even if the individual examples used (i.e., the comments of specific LGF users) standing alone is minor. I know it can make someone feel more elevated and Substantive and Important to speak of all the High-Minded, Elevate Due Process Concepts illustrated by the Khalid Mohammed confession, but that doesn't mean that discussing those concepts is, in fact, more important or that it will achieve anything.