The recent fight between bloggers and the Washington Post provides the best example of the emerging role of bloggers in the public debate. Bloggers have become the Ombudsman of the traditional media.
As virtually every major traditional media outlet has cut back on their reporting and editing staff over the last several years investigative reporting has suffered. While great investigative pieces continue to come out of traditional media they are reported alongside of repurposed press releases with one sided spin.
The incident de jour between Bloggers and the Washington Post grew out of several comments from the Deborah Howell, the Post’s own Ombudsman. In defending the Post’s reporting, Howell wrote:
“Schmidt quickly found that Abramoff was getting 10 to 20 times as much from Indian tribes as they had paid other lobbyists. And he had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties.”
Since no Democrat received any direct contributions from Abramoff, Media Matters and other Democratic leaning bloggers quickly went after Howell. (Note – while clients of Abramoff gave to Democrats, their contributions to Democrats did not increase after they hired Abramoff).
As the issue got heated yesterday, the Post turned off comments on their blog:
“But there are things that we said we would not allow, including personal attacks, the use of profanity and hate speech.”
Unfortunately for the Post, The Democratic Underground blog saved the comments that were on the Post’s site. While they make a good read, the “profanity and hate speech” hardly describe the entire contents.
The ability of partisan bloggers to hold the traditional media accountable was best described by a “Buckhead,” a conservative bloggers who was instrumental in taking apart the 60 Minutes story on President Busha National Guard record . In speaking about the role of the bloggers on the Free Repbulic he stated, “Freepers collectively possess more analytical horsepower than the entire news division at CBS.”
Without editors and having clear political viewpoints, bloggers are not objective researchers of the truth. For example in Today’s Post, Al Kamen goes after liberal bloggers that took quotes from a Bush speech on Social Security and claimed it was about the Medicare Prescription plan.
While no one in Washington is pure (including the author of this post), bloggers on the left and the right keeping the traditional press accountable while the traditional press pushes bloggers to live up to the same standards all helps to move the debate towards the truth.
Publications can turn off their comments and stop reading letters, but in the end they can not stop the public debate.