The Blogosphere is primarily good for collecting scalps. It is most noticed when it is least edifying - that is, when one group of partisans or other frenzies. All of its various "triumphs" - Trent Lott; Easterbrook; Rather; Eason Jordan; "Gannon" - have constituted destroying someone. Some of them deserved it, and some more than others. But rather than "supplant" the establishment media, The Blogosphere has instead supplanted the anonymous political operators who used to start and foster whispering campaigns. Actually, the APOs are undoubtedly still around, e-mailing bloggers instead of reporters.

I think Jim is right, there. And the hell of it is that in few of these cases has there been any triumph for truth.

I do find it ironic when you say, "The lesson I take from this is that if you take an opinion that is not approved of by the left, and there is anything in your past that might be embarrassing, God help you."

It wasn't the left that brought down Dan Rather, who was hardly a small-fry like Gannon. And Rather's error was pretty mild - certainly when you compare it to the enormous catelogue of errors and slanders that have come from right-leaning newspeople like Stossel, Miller, Gerth, Seeleye, Connolly, O'Reilly, Hannity, Russert, Limbaugh, Coulter, and so on.

It's a shame Media Whores Online is dead. They used to keep a long list of Media Whores - people in mainstream media who were happy to sacrifice the truth and even the most minimal standards of fact-checking in order to support the Republican line. People who very nearly brought down the Clinton presidency without a single piece of evidence of any wrong-doing on the part of the Clintons. MWO kept a continuous tally of falsehoods purveyed by mainstream media - and none of the people who spread those falsehoods have lost their jobs over them.

The irony is that Dan Rather became a principal target of the right-wing hit machine precisely because he refused to join in on attacking Clinton with the speed and enthusiasm that these others joined the partisan hackery.

In Gannon's case, the left blogosphere got rid of one person who was clearly not a legitimate newsman and had no standards at all, having been slipped into the room for the sole purpose of misdirecting the media away from serious issues. That's no loss to the truth.

The right blogosphere, on the other hand, got rid of a newsman who actually had higher standards than most in the mainstream media today, because his team made one minor mistake in an otherwise true story. And they were after him not because he made an occasional mistake, but because he wasn't a partisan hack for the RNC. That's how the right-wing defines "bias" - as not biased for the right-wing.

Avedon,

The right brought down Rather because Rather committed a reporting-related error in using forged documents to buttress a story. Gannon was brought down by people digging into his private life to locate embarrassing information. Other than the involvement of the blogosphere, I don't really see a parallel here. I find it difficult to believe you think it's ok to dig into someone's personal life simply because they are not a 'legitimate' newsman (and I'd love to hear who gets the authority to make those calls). I concur that Gannon's loss is no loss to the truth, but I do think it's a rather significant loss to civility and privacy.

I have no interest in fighting the bias wars, as they are wholly unwinnable. Dan Rather could give the keynote speech at the 2008 Democratic convention and we'd still hear about how that's not proof he's biased. The proposition is inherently unprovable, so there is no profit in discussing it. But I am rather curious if you really see Gannon and Rather as parallel cases.

Andrew, I'll plop for another parallel, one that Avedon won't appreciate: "Gannon" and Clinton. Bill Clinton perjured himself when asked questions that, per a sexual harrassment law that he himself signed, were perfectly legal to ask in those circumstances. But what made the story go was the sexual thrill of it, on both sides. It stimulated the puritan/prurience response on the Right, and it gave the President's defenders the opportunity to argue that "It's all about sex."

In the Gannon case, the following is a scandal: "Gannon" got White House press credentials under a pseudonym, which is Not Done. It wasn't done pre-9/11; it's the opposite of SOP post-9/11. People who have dug into the transcripts find a clear pattern of "Gannon" acting as a lifeline for White House spokesweasels. He got called on a lot. The two phenomena together make it clear that he was not "just another journalist" to the White House. Given the Armstrong Williams scandal and the lesser matter of Maggie Gallagher, it is reasonable to conclude that "Gannon's" position has the stink of corruption about it.

Then, on top of that, there is the hypocrisy of "Gannon's" multiple articles defending the GOP's direst anti-gay policies in light of his apparent . . . sexual entrepreneurship. It's the very very last component righties have seized upon to make themselves feel better about the whole thing. You're prying into his private life! Actually, that isn't even true. Blowing sailors is "private life." Running websites to hire out sailors for people to blow is business. (And now your search engine hits for "blowing sailors" are going through the roof. Sorry!)

Just as the presence of sex acted as a lifeline for Clinton's defenders, so the whiff of homosexuality functions for "Gannon's," a way to pretend the issue wasn't hypocrisy and falsehood. (You'll notice Clinton never moved to change the law that snared him. It's good enough law for the littles.) I didn't buy it then and I don't buy it now.

Jim,

That's a good point, and one I obviously had not considered. I still don't see this as a parallel situation to Rather, but you're correct that the Gannon takedown was legitimate.

The sex angle is the one a lot of people want to latch onto, and maybe it's the one that gives the story legs for them, but the fact is that Gannon didn't belong in the White House press corps.

Rather committed a reporting-related error, it's true. But the right doesn't bring reporters down for making reporting-related errors. They bring down Dan Rather for making reporting-related errors. If they went after people for making reporting-related errors, there would be few reporters left of any stripe, since everybody screws up now and then. But Rather never got as many things wrong as such obviously-biased "newsmen" as Stossel. Rather is not the guy who faked-up the Whitewater story. Rather is not the the guy whose election-night coverage involved calling an election for Bush at a time when it was likely that Gore would be shown to have won as soon as all the ballots were counted. Those are very serious errors indeed, but the people who made them still have their jobs.

"The sex angle is the one a lot of people want to latch onto, and maybe it's the one that gives the story legs for them, but the fact is that [Clinton] didn't belong in the White House [ . . . ]"

<GDR>

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