Don't they know how they look?

Not content to just acknowledge that they bungled this scandal, dubbed "Nadagate" by NYTimes columnist John Tierney, some high-profile newspapers are accusing the president of going back on his promise that anyone on his staff who leaked Valerie Plame's ID to the press would be fired. The problem is, he never said that. The words were put in his mouth by a questioner in the hostile White House news corps. Anybody who's watched a White House press briefing in the past four years knows how dishonest their "questioning" can be. Andrew McCarthy has an interesting list of the facts that have shown up in court filings on behalf of major media, but never mentioned to the public.

Don't these people realize how vicious and childish they look? It's as though they know they're losing credibility, but won't admit it. This kind of vendetta journalism suggests that they still believe the people will think what they tell them to think. After a string of press scandals which have made the blogosphere famous, this one seems like the biggest yet, involving as it does the AP which writes half the national news for newspapers in this country as well as the NYTimes, the LATimes, the Washington Post, the latest Axis of Weasels. Read Tom Maquire's roundup.

Brit Hume reported this evening that polls reflecting the public's faith in the president's honesty have been dropping, but Mort Kondracke pointed out the biased wording of ABC's poll, which set up the facts in a way that isn't factual. Still, I think that if more people watched the spectacle of Helen Thomas bitching at Scott McClellan and the mob scene that such "briefings" have become, they'd have nothing more to do with most of the MSM.

This really could be a test of the power of the blogosphere and conservative media. In previous scandals where only one program or newsperson were involved, the blogosphere's continuing drumbeat caused the news powers that be to cover the story after initially ignoring it. This one is a direct challenge to the media as a whole. I don't think blogger critics can force this solid conspiracy to back down, but maybe they don't really need to. They can still keep making the point, though. The tide is in their favor. People who read news from newsprint, or it might just be the readers of liberal papers, are finding other sources. I wouldn't say that a reaction to media bias is what gave Bush a three per cent victory, but if media support really is or was worth 15 percentage points, I'd worry if I were a Democrat.

So, if I had any power to sway readers, I'd tell them to monitor the blogs linked above, as well as the Weekly Standard, Best of the Web, Hugh Hewitt, Instapundit and the blogs mentioned by them.