Powerline quotes Emerson professor Jeffrey Seglin, appearing in the LA Times:
"The mainstream press is having to follow them," said Jeffrey Seglin, a professor at Emerson College in Boston. "And what happens when this stuff gets into the mainstream, and it eventually turns out that the '60 Minutes' documents were perfectly legitimate, but because there's been so much reporting about what's being reported, it has already taken on a life of its own?"
Really? Then I've got some questions for Seglin: Who prepares the stories I read in the paper? Especially those which just say "AP"? Who prepares the various reports I hear on NPR? What are their credentials? Or, more specifically, who are these unnamed "experts" upon whom CBS is relying for authentication? From whom did they receive the documents? What are their credentials? Who writes the material Dan Rather reads from the teleprompter?
We don't know any of these things.
When the Washington Post publishes a report from Bagdad, how do we know their "man in the field" isn't a Baathist Party loyalist or other extermist? How can we check that? Even when we do see a reporter's name how do we know he's being accurate? And what do we know about the faceless, uncredited "stringers" who will often provide the bulk of the story, about their biases, motivations, and integrity level? How do we know every day there aren't a dozen stories being buried by the MSM because they don't advance their POV?
We don't.
Sure, it's a great question to raise about the world of bloggers. But it's just as good a question to raise about the mainstream media.
So what are my credentials? I claim none, and ask you to believe nothing other than on the face of the evidence I can present to you.
Take this scandal, "Rathergate", as some have dubbed it, as an example. Bloggers aren't out there saying: "Oh, this is fake. Trust me, I'm expert, or I talked to one -- who, I won't tell ya -- and trust me, it's not real." No, they've been putting forth -- left and right -- both sides of their argument, putting the details, arguments, and illustrations online, and letting the reader make up their mind.
Even when a blogger is personally unknown, it is the "cred" of their online site which is at stake. Some bloggers will grasp hold of any shards of evidence, and play fast and loose with their (purported) standards in order to support their particular partisan view. Others, while perhaps even still having a horse in the race, are a bit more fair. Readers get to decide what kind of blogs they'll "listen" to -- those which always tell them what they want to hear, or those which are interested in credibility and may at least try to be fair.
This is nothing different than with video news: I know some individuals who won't watch certain news networks because, apparently, those channels don't reflect their biases. Thus, they deliberately insulate themselves from the hard work of sorting, sifting, and thinking for themselves, and move into an editorial echo chamber.
Ironicly, Seglin's final question, "And what happens when this stuff gets into the mainstream?" implies he, himself doesn't really believe the mainstream media has any credibility. After all, aren't MSM outlets supposed to be vaunted fact-checkers? Aren't they supposed to have a reputation to protect? Aren't they supposed to have time, contacts, expertise, and resources to help sift fact from fiction?
If they have all these great things, then how would they be so easily duped by the big, bad, nasty bloggers? Or if they could be thus duped, then why should we believe they'd be any less gullible with any other source?
Of course, we shouldn't.
Seglin raises some legitimate questions. But, if they're real issues, he should have raised them about the mainstream media years ago. There's no particular reason we should think that because a reporter receives a paycheck from CBS, AP, or the New York Times, that said reporter is honest, accurate, or unbaised in their reporting. Indeed, over the past several years, the overwheming evidence suggests otherwise.