The 'Beat The Press' Hit Piece On Bloggers: My Conversation With Emily Rooney Of WGBH-TV Boston

If you've seen this segment of "Beat the Press," you already know it was a nasty hit piece attacking several leading progressive bloggers by name and the progressive blogging community as a whole.

If you haven't, you need to watch it.

Also, if you're unfamiliar with the background, you can get up to speed by reading the original NYT piece by Danny Glover of the National Review, the article that started the broughhaha, here, and by linking to some of the responses the original article provoked (I've tried to arrange them chronologically) here, here and here.

Of course, what makes the WGBH program absurd is that the most shocking charges made during the segment were based on a satirical post by Jonathan Singer written in response to Glover. So the facts as alleged weren't facts at all. They were snarks. Bogus. So obviously bogus it would have been immediately apparent to a reporter bothering to do even minimal fact checking. Which, apparently, journalism professor John Carroll did not.

To its credit, Greater Boston, of which "Beat the Press" is a regular Friday feature, published a correction on its blog on Monday,

The staff of Greater Boston made an error on the Dec. 8 “Beat The Press” program in reporting on bloggers accepting money from political campaigns. Reporter John Carroll quoted a My DD posting which claimed that My DD founder Jerome Armstrong was the person behind several online pseudonyms. That was not the case. The posting was meant as satire, and the individuals referred to are actual bloggers. We should have checked those facts, and we regret not doing so. We will run a correction on tonight’s program (Dec. 11), and discuss the story on Friday’s “Beat The Press.”

But when I compared the correction to the muck so casually thrown about by the panelists (establishment journalists all) during Friday's show, I thought it inadequate to the insult. So yesterday I called the show's moderator, Emily Rooney, in order to get her comments to include in the article.

Ms Rooney graciously returned my call and we had a civil yet (in diplomatic-speak) frank exchange of views of between five and 10 minutes duration.

What became quickly apparent, at least to me, was the gulf (chasm?) that exists between bloggers and Serious Journalists and Commentators who deem themselves arbiters of journalistic standards, ethics, et al.

This is what Ms Rooney believes.

Some 90% of the comments received in response to the correction were vituperative and "ugly." I'm sure some of them were. But 90%? Read the comments (link above). They seem pretty tame to me. My take: Members of the media elite do not take kindly to being criticized by a crowd of plebs with access to a large online audience. To me Rooney's complaint is a variation of Deborah Howell's full-throated howl against bloggers' comments earlier this year.

Rooney's on-air snark against bloggers that "not that they have great credibility anyway" is an opinion while comments calling Mr Carroll an "idiot" are "personal" attacks. Rooney asks me if I don't see the difference. My take: I don't. I see sophistry and hair-splitting. Rooney is indulging in a blanket attack against an entire class rather than an individual -- so, by definition, her attack isn't personal. But it is no less pejorative and snide.

Rooney argues the taped, selectively-edited interview with blogger David Kravtiz used to support the smear that leading progressive bloggers named in the segment are "kept" and "on the take" (narrator Carroll's words) is open to interpretation and can be viewed as separate from the overall tone of the hit piece. My take: Baloney. This is a facile, Tony Snow "no it isn't, so there" kind of defense. That Carroll used the clip to support his animosity and preestablished premise that bloggers are corrupt is clear; that it was taken out of context, that Kravitz was not responding to what Singer wrote, is also, in retrospect, clear. Which means the motive to include the interview was to mislead -- and that makes its use at best disingenuos and at worst unethical.

Rooney agrees the incident is embarrassing but is surprised at the avalanche of comments. My take: After reviewing the clip several times, I'm not.

Rooney still thinks blogs lack credibility. My take on the circularity of her argument: ARRGGGGGH!

In the era of the internets, Rooney and Carroll are discovering it isn't easy sitting astride a high horse.

Especially when you've mounted the thing facing the wrong end.

UPDATE Kos has a terrific article slicing and dicing journalism professor John Carroll and highlighting the divide between old and new media.