It's a swarm

The liberal media are feeling beleaguered. Bloggers are eating their lunch and they're playing into their hands.

What is interesting is that bloggers and talk radio are only commentators, not primary deliverers of news. Without all the reporters, they wouldn't have much to write about. What that means is that the main vulnerability of old media is its lack of interpretive objectivity. They generally report facts, but they don't see the true implications of them. When they claim to be investigators, but then bungle like CBS just did, they look more like Clouseau than Holmes.

This is not to say that blogs are only commentators. They scour world media and link to stories we never used to see, and they focus on stories that the msm don't want to discuss. When they're in a position to do so, they supply facts that we probably wouldn't get, such as reporting from Iraq by milbloggers, and they provide a breadth of expertise that msm are just too limited or lazy to.

The comments about the CBS documents come from people who have typed that kind of documents for the military, printers, experts in computing and typewriters, as well as forensic documents examiners. 60 Minutes walked into a buzz saw and still doesn't seem to realize what hit it.

Update: Heh. Complaining that bloggers have no checks and balances doesn't cut it, does it? I guess the drafters of the Constitution just couldn't imagine a situation where all the media were as monolithic and uniform as they are today, when journalists are the products of specialized j-schools. They figured that diversity of opinion would provide all the checks needed. But they blew other things, too. Fortunately, freedom, education and technology provides the checks and balances Mr. Klein worries about. As Glenn likes to say, quoting Ken Layne I think, "We can factcheck your ass." It took a while, but the msm are finally being held accountable.