The best defense against the "truth squad" is tell the truth. If you Rathergatge to smear America the "truth squad" may cut you to ribbons.
It seems the NYT has been do8ng a lot of bleeding the last few years.

Ah yes, Danny Schechter. Blog-bashing left-wing dipshit extraordinaire.

"It's more important that we take that information and tell you what it means."

What a crock! They lie and distort information regularly to fit their version of political, social and cultural reality, and expect us to swallow it without noticing that it tastes like sh*t. A return to basics is in order. Fairly report the facts (all of 'em, please, not just those you find ideologically suitable) and let your readership draw its own conclusions. I don't need you to tell me "what it means," thank you.

The best exercise I can remember from Journalism 101 (Yes that was the actual name of the course) was the teacher - a copy editor from the local paper - handed out what he said were notes on random stories. Everyone had a different story. We had half an hour to bang out some copy.

He collected them all and read them anonymously to the class. It turns out that we were all given the same notes. But we all pretty much wrote a different story.

I know you like to whack on Atrios, but the guy is ALL OVER the absurd MSM takes on blogs.

Guess what? From the left side of the blogosphere, the take is not that different from yours -- except that on the left they have all those inconvenient facts about the NYT and most of the MSM, repeating Repub talking points, refusing to call the admin on demonstrable lies, and protecting the admin (Miller, Woodward...)

On the right side of the blogosphere, blogs just replicate rightwing talk radio. What happens on the left is less redundant.

Is anyone else supremely irritated by the supercilious expression, "Guess what?"

On the right side of the blogosphere, blogs just replicate rightwing talk radio. What happens on the left is less redundant.

I more or less agree with this. Only, instead of "less redundant" you should probably write "batshit crazy".

For Mr./Ms. No-Name:

This is my guess: your attempt to contextualize this very discussion (by framing the Left as free-spirited truth-seekers and the Right as mindless robot-parrots) is transparent, wholly unsupported by facts, pitifully amateurish and not remotely inventive.

We've pretended to be like priests turning water to wine, like it's a secret process.

Er...what religion's priests do that?

Typical cluelessness about the most basic aspects of religion.

Bob,

OMG! That is the stupidest thing. Do you think he meant to say Christ turning water to wine? Or maybe something to do with the bread and wine at Mass?

It does show such an ignorance of religion.

Er...what religion's priests do that?

Well, I've heard there was this rabbi once...

The conversations the MSM losers are having regarding blogs are precisely the same conversations the buggy whip manufacturers were having about those nasty auto builders around 1914.
Only the modern MSM is the one who has been whipping us with their self serving lies where they pretend they are actually reporting accurately.
Until a major media outlet totally shuts down Mary Mape's lies and shreds her in an interview, and the rest of the media picks it up and shows her to be lying, they are not even close to admitting they ahve a problem.

The media should stick to the reporting the entire straight facts of a story. Instead, many reporters have reached a point of manufacturing or tweeking facts in order to promote a partisian political agenda. The listening informed public is sick and tired of name calling and hate speech on either side of the isle. We are ready for useful dialogue with positive alternatives in difficult situations. Let us choose. Don't make decisions for us! Balance, balance, balance..... There ARE positives in all situations. We want to see them too.

tv,

msm is not without its uses. it is the lens through which we may see the bottom of the rabbit hole. hope is that we continue to remain on the right side of the lens. stay open, stay vigilant, stay happy. hypocrisy is the illness of the left. leniency is the illness of the right.

How dare those soldiers write their own firsthand accounts of their own experiences? They need Jamie McIntyre to tell them what it means!

I was just reading LSSU's 2006 Banished Word List and noticed how many of them were from (you guessed it) MSM.

Meanwhile -- hide those goblets. I was over at a demmie site earlier. Someone was trying to change a keg of water into wine, but the best he could conjure was grape koolaid .....

The solders have a better view of it all then a bunch of pampered spoiled left-wing journalists who have not been beyond their office

"It's now O.K. to demonize the messenger," he [Schecter] said.

That's the nub of the MSM fallacy, I figure. They are in denial--plain and simple--that mainstream journos are ACTORS in the events. They TRY to influence events, not just relay them to their audience. (Evidence: the 60 Minutes memo forgeries, the Katrina hype, and all the "crises" they try to gin up, constantly.) The journos are not neutral, and their reporting is not transparent.

And bloggers (I'm not) and blogophiles (that's me!) know that it's perfectly OK to throw a punch at anybody who climbs into the ring.

And this latest round of MSM protestation is just an indicator they've got glass jaws.