Journos On The Run

I give Dan Rather credit for pointing out what is patently obvious these days. Announcing it is one thing, though. Doing something about it is an entirely different matter.

To me, this definitely explains, for example, The Philadelphia Inquirer's endorsement of John Roberts for Chief Justice last Sunday. The entire tone of the editorial was along the lines of, "this guy is the best we'll get, so just accept him and get him confirmed, and he's not as bad as some of the other people Bush has sent up" (I'm thinking of Miguel Estrada here, who basically sat through his hearing and said virtually nothing with this bemused look on his face, acting as if his confirmation would be but a mere formality). The last paragraph basically said point blank to write this one off and gear up for the next fight over O'Connor's replacement. Wow, what pioneering journalism!

This is where we bloggers have to come in (I don’t assume for a minute that I have the “cred” of any of the other big-hit sites…I’m just doing my thing and trying to help in my small way). We have to fill in the blanks and observe similar standards and conventions as our dear MSM cousins, though the whole point of doing this, I think, is to lend our own viewpoint to our topics as we see fit so, if at all possible, we can educate and inform and let everyone make up their own minds.

I think, collectively, we are making inroads, some more so than others. I found it curious, when reading a post from Atrios yesterday, to discover that Flush Lim-bore actually criticized Atrios and The Daily Kos by name instead of referring to them simply as “the loony left” or whatever pejorative Frank Luntz-approved term is being used this week. The fact that, to him, the face of “the enemy” is becoming clearer is a message in itself, as far as I’m concerned.

Anyway, as I read what Rather said, I realized that this item, though I originally wrote it as satire, might come to fruition somehow (with the decline in standards for the profession aided in no small part by the Judy Miller saga).