Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Weak Attack on Bloggers by Journalist:
The [1]Minneapolis Star-Tribune's Nick Coleman has a pretty poor
attack on the [2]PowerLine blog (which had apparently criticized him
in the past on many occasions). Consider a few snippets:
These guys pretend to be family watchdogs but they are Rottweilers
in sheep's clothing. They attack the Mainstream Media for not being
fair while pursuing a right-wing agenda cooked up in conservative
think tanks funded by millionaire power brokers.
This makes no sense. First, you can be "fair" and pursue a
conservative agenda; presumably many on the Left, for instance, think
that they're fair in their pursuit of an agenda.
Second, there's nothing reprehensible about opinion sites having a
political agenda (whether "cooked up in conservative think tanks
funded my millionaire power brokers" or not); PowerLine is clearly
such an opinion site, as is the Conspiracy. Likewise, liberal
columnists are perfectly entitled to have a liberal agenda. But when
the ostensibly nonpolitical, objective news organizations within the
media are politically slanted in their coverage of the news, that does
merit condemnation -- not because they're being opinionated, but
because they're pretending not to be.
Or consider this:
Powerline is the biggest link in a daisy chain of right-wing blogs
that is assaulting the Mainstream Media while they toot their horns
in the service of ... what? The downtrodden? No, that was
yesterday's idea of the purpose of journalism.
As [3]Evan Coyne Maloney aptly points out, this is quite a remarkable
admission by Mr. Coleman: Yesterday's idea of the purpose of
journalism, which it sounds like he prefers, was to serve the
downtrodden. Shouldn't the purpose of news journalism be to tell the
truth, rather than "serve" one group or another? Shouldn't opinion
journalism include a wide range of opinion from a wide range of
sources, not just that on the "serve the downtrodden" side?
Extreme bloggers are so hip and cool they can make fun of the poor
and the disadvantaged while working out of paneled bank offices.
By way of background, consider that earlier in the story Mr. Coleman
had "A story: In 1990, I reported that this newspaper's endorsement of
DFL Gov. Rudy Perpich was decided by then-publisher and Perpich crony
Roger Parkinson. He had quashed the decision of the newspaper's
editorial board, which had voted in favor of the Republican
challenger, Arne Carlson. The truth got out, the Republican won and
the public was served. If Extreme bloggers, who know nothing that
happened before last Tuesday, had the same commitment to serving the
public, I wouldn't have a problem. But like talk radio, they are
dominated by the right and are only interested in being a megaphone
without oversight, disclosure of conflicts of interest, or
professional standards."
My question (and [4]Maloney's): Wouldn't "professional standards,"
which Mr. Coleman seems to claim to adhere to, call for some evidence
that the PowerLine people are indeed "mak[ing] fun of the poor and the
disadvantaged"? I mean, if you're a journalist -- even an opinion
journalist -- and you're making factual accusations about supposedly
bad conduct by someone, shouldn't you back them up? No such evidence
appears in the column.
There's so much more to criticize, but let me close with two
particularly striking items:
1) "It's totally unexpected," Johnson, the banker, told the
newspaper after Powerline won "Blog of the Year."
But the Aw Shucks Act doesn't fly. Powerline campaigned shamelessly
for awards, winning an online "Best Blog of 2004" a week before the
Time honor. That online award was a bloggers' poll, and Powerline
linked its readers to the award site 10 times during the balloting,
shilling for votes.
Wow, they won an online poll! And they wanted to win it, and tried to
get its readers to vote for them. Therefore, they're lying when they
say that they didn't expect being named Blog of the Year by Time
Magazine. The penetrating logic astounds me. And finally, this:
2) "We keep it very much separate from our day jobs," said
Hinderaker, meaning the boys don't blog at work.
But they do. Johnson recently had time at his bank job to post a
despicable item sliming Sen. Mark Dayton. . . .
Here's the quote that I suspect Mr. Coleman was alluding to, since
it's the only such quote I could find on LEXIS, and it appeared [5]in
the Star-Tribune itself:Despite the honor, the trio have no plans to
leave their day jobs, Hinderaker said. The economics of the Internet
don't make it worthwhile, though they have begun running ads that
bring in a few thousand dollars a month. "It's like being a golfer,"
Hinderaker said. "We keep it very much separate from our day
jobs."Where exactly in this quote do they say that they "don't blog at
work"? (The analogy to golf, it seems to me, is simply an indication
that blogging, like golf, is a hobby; in any event, it surely isn't
something that can be fairly characterized as "meaning the boys don't
blog at work.") Where are those professional standards when you need
them?
References
1. http://www.startribune.com/stories/357/5158765.html
2. http://powerlineblog.com/
3. http://brain-terminal.com/articles/media/nick-coleman.html
4. http://brain-terminal.com/articles/media/nick-coleman.html
5. http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/5145431-2.html
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