Blogger Wars

Reports that blogger Brian Pickrell published material from a Wal-Mart flack without attribution, turn out to be less unethical from his end than the newsmongers want us to believe. You have to read through to page 2 of Howard Kurtz's piece to get to Pickrell's side of the story. He says that the Wal-Mart stuff was posted as quotes from "a reader." I can't tell if he knew the "reader" was a PR firm for Wal-Mart, but if he agrees with it and puts it in quotes, I don't see the harm. Maybe the NYTimes hasn't heard of "spoofing." The sender shown in your email program doesn't necessarily exist. Maybe they've heard of "spam."

I suppose Brian could do a little more checking before he quotes somebody, but then blogging isn't his day job, is it? His account of the matter doesn't make the NYTimes look very meticulous about quotes either. He accuses the reporter of quoting him inaccurately in such a way as to make him look like a Wal-Mart junkie and a hick.

So who's the Darth Vader in these blogger wars? Everybody has to decide for himself, but I tend to believe that the MSM is the Empire, and bloggers the rebels.

As for the high standard of journalistic ethics in the MSM, consider the USA Today story about desertions from the military since the Iraq war began. The first paragraph goes as follows:

At least 8,000 members of the all-volunteer U.S. military have deserted since the Iraq war began, Pentagon records show, although the overall desertion rate has plunged since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. [My italics]

The rest of the story does give correct data, I think, but couching it in terms of the war is a dishonest implication that there is something ominous about these data. If anything, they're good news, but that's not how USA Today want it to play. As James Taranto points out, the story is spun to "follow their Iraq-as-Vietnam script, whether or not it's consistent with the facts." How dare such people lecture bloggers, or anybody else, on ethics?