The Blogosphere in action
Just thought I'd add a quick post about the buzz in the Blogosphere surrounding the possible indictment of White House adviser Karl Rove.
A handful of liberal blogs, led by this story in truthout.org, began reporting over the weekend that Rove had been served the indictment papers by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.
So far, there has been absolutely no mention of this in the MSM. Of course, this provides the perfect test for whether the Blogosphere is ahead of MSM in reporting breaking news, whether it rushes out stories before verification, and whether the Blogosphere is capable of "keeping a story alive" and getting the MSM to follow suit with its own coverage. In other words, this could be the perfect case study of how the Blogosphere operates, and how accurate it is. Stay tuned!
Comments
Oh, mention of this has popped up in the MSM (if that's what you call the Wall Street Journal's editorial page)... criticizing the blogs. But what blogs?
John Aravosis at AmericaBlog, citing Salon, counters: Wall Street Journal bashes liberal blogs for embracing "Rove indicted" story. Problem is, we didn't.
He said / she said journalism lands on yet another shore. Or is it really a different island from the one we're already on?
There can be a tendency to do as Limbaugh does and quote something highly speculative, note that it's unconfirmed, and then launch a riff for 15 (or 30 or 90) minutes on the significance of it, tossing in an occassional "if it's true." That's a rhetorically dishonest way of repeating the suspect report without actually saying you buy into it. Aravosis did not do this, but others may have.
And that raises the question, how can the MSM report on or counter blogosphere rumors without particpating in the spreading of them? Same issue, I suppose, as for covering political rumor. The answer in recent years has increasingly been to pull a variation on the Limbaugh-ian maneuver noted above. Or, if it's a rumor about Willy Run, possible candidate for office, do stories on how ineffective Run's response has been to the scurrilous rumors dogging his possible candidacy.
Posted by: John Broholm | May 16, 2006 2:53 PM