I think you miss the point. Neither of these were a momentary lapse - They were signs of an incessant and irresponsible liberal bias in the media that is generally unanswered. Folks like Rather and Jordan have a stage that they play on and there is no one who calls them on their biases.

The bloggers may be aggressive once in a while but in general, they are expressing a common public belief about the harsh bias and irresponsibility in the media.

I don't think its ironic to use a blog to complain about blogging. Our common interest is to create a smarter future. A smarter future begins with an evaluation of our own mistakes. I write in a process similiar to blink (as in Malcolm Gladwell) but I have never embraced groupthink, I have always rejected it because I never thought that it lent to the betterment of a transparent world or to the betterment of authentic living.

Those first two seconds of thought are valuable in that they hold the promise of transparency and the error of our thinking. There is a welding point where traditional media and open source media forge and when that happens, mainstream journalists and bloggers will work as teams not as adversaries, but that means a shift in how mainstream journalists view the world - not as fact finders but providers of information that lead to problem solving and shaping thinking that accomodates a transparent world.

The future right now can be determined how we bridge our collective mistakes and how mistakes on both sides of what seems to becoming a new divide can bridge to create a better future - a future not about names and celebrity, but a future that accomodates humanity as well as professionalism.

M.
1998-2005

"Let's say you have a momentary lapse in decorum in some semi-public setting where you, God forbid, say something negative..."

I agree we shouldn't have witch hunts. Does that mean you think Trent Lot was treated unjustly?

I see some serious problems with free speech happening because of this phenomenon. The media SHOULD be a forum for free speech... I don't think that Jordan should have "resigned" because he was critical of the way both sides in the Iraq war have handled journalists... No one else in the mainstream media has been talking about it.

It's laughable that there are several mentions of the "liberal" media... This is a myth that keeps getting perpetuated.

There's no liberal bias in the media.

If there was, that would mean that I'd be seeing pictures of wounded soldiers on TV, and I wouldn't be hearing "talking points" from the whitehouse and the GOP.

And all I hear is talking points from EVERY news station out there.

There is no liberal bias in the media anymore. The liberals in the media have lost their courage.

I think that bloggers (me included) have reocognized the power they have, but have not yet discovered the responsibility; I also think that the Jordan, Rather, and other cases have underlined the utterly poisonous level of political debate in the United States.

Bob LeDrew,
Blogmeister, Flacklife

I don't think Dan Rather's fuck-up is any evidence of tendentious liberal bias. After all it is undisputed that Bush cheated on his National Guard Service, first on weaselling his way in in order to avoid vietnam, then in failing to show up for all his duties.

Rather got screwed by some forger -- possibly some Republican set-up, possibly some dolt Democrat -- throwing out a phoney version of something already known to be true.

Eason Jordan was nearly fired less than a year ago for what amounts to a quid pro quo deal with the Sadaam government in Iraq, but held on and was only demoted. This latest episode was a massive lapse in judgement and a withering example of ineptitude.

Rather's role in the Bush story was lamentable, and he was asked to leave. His past transgressions--storming off the set, giving a speech before a liberal interest group and pretending he'd merely "forgotten" the company rules after working there for three decades, declining ratings, etc.--do not exactly seem like a reason to keep an employee around when he's well beyond retirement age.

These two individuals are responsibile for their actions. Their actions were indefensible. That it was the bloggers who called them out on it and not the mainstream press corp matters none at all. How is it a witch hunt when CBS willingly pays for an independent investigation and then fires a handful of key people? Why are the bloggers the witch hunt and not the CBS-approved commission?

And wait for the echo chamber to turn the other political direction? Please. MoveOn.org and dozens of other blog communities have detailed every misstep of Republicans (Trent Lott episode ring a bell??????????)

These cases are not about unfair justice. When you have integrity, you don't have to watch your back.

What a beautiful treadmill of human words from "WE THE PEOPLE" who think the problems of life are what pours out of our television and our latest gizmo media screens. Lets get off this treadmill, throw this news away because it will be discarded eventually in the spinning waste of media history and then we will all be spinning with the next soundbite.

Trash it, throw it away, spend time with the kids, plant some flowers, do you really think life changes for the better simply because something caught our attention. That's the game we are caught up in. We worship the wrong people so we can dog on each other. They are all laughing at us, the next time Trent Lott is at a party with Eason Jordan, they might think about us, but I can't remember anyone who would spend their time thinking about suckers if they are the ones living the life.

Is that what we want to become, a blog? A blog is simply a chronological graveyard of yesterday's thoughts. Nothing really changes man, until we change.

M.