Reason: A Swift Boat Kick in the Teeth: How the mainstream media grapple with partisans
My take? Really really badly. But the blogsphere is no better! In the MSM, they cover the story and do investigation of claims. But for time or space or opinion reasons, abbreviations are made and ultimately they get the partisan claims out there nearly as naked as they ever were. The blogsphere suffers the opposite problem; though they do not have time or space as constraints, writers are more naked in their own opinions, and mostly use other (similar leaning) blogs as their sources. A point I particularly agree with is the partisaness of writers who claim objectivity; they never fail to inject the worst kind of "sky-is-falling hyperbole". Even if the points are wrong, they still manage to bemoan the opponent or the messenger. It's almost too much responsibility too fast for these web authors. Oh well, give it time. With luck, the blogsphere will be able to provide what mainstream media cannot; a NON-partisan, independent look with the research to back their points. Example: there should never be a posting without checking with factcheck.org first. 