If bloggers are vigilantes, are journalists the sheriff?

Note this statement by David Gergen on The Newshour:

. . . [I]n this particular instance there were not only those who were pressing I think not unfairly for a release but there were those who were out for his scalp. And there was a vigilante justice kind of quality here of people who were going after Eason Jordan not because of what he said but because of what he represented,

Now reread it, but substitute George Bush for Eason Jordan and change the context to Bush's National Guard record. Does this logic apply to what Dan Rather and 60 Minutes II did?

The key is the term "vigilante" which refers to a bunch of people acting without authority who take the law into their own hands. Does Gergen imply that you have to have some kind of government authority to be allowed to write about such matters?

Update: Eugene Volokh makes a similar point. Lynch mobs kill people. Bloggers only criticize them. Nobody from the blogosphere forced Jordan to resign, they don't have that power. If the people who wrap themselves in the First Amendment don't understand the difference, they shouldn't be claiming the banner of a free press.

And Instapundit illustrates that the blogosphere has the clearest points about this:

Well, everybody does screw up, and there's nothing unforgivable about screwing up. What's unforgivable is either deliberately misleading, or following a screwup with denials and stonewalls. The defensiveness with which a lot of Big Media folks are responding to this topic suggest to me that either they're unable to imagine a swift and open correction, or that their work is even worse than we think . . . .

Indeed.