June 20, 2005
6/20: Bark At The Moon
The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.
In the blogosphere, memos have become a subject where one treads lightly. In 9/04, a few right-of-center bloggers exposed documents regarding Pres. Bush's Nat'l Guard record as forgeries -- a case that brought no small amount of attention to the blogosphere. Then in 3/05, the same bloggers (Power Line figures prominently in both cases) questioned the authenticity of a GOP memo re: the Terri Schiavo case -- that memo ended up being real, if not all it seemed, and it was those same bloggers that goaded the MSM into following the story.
This weekend we have a similar case: new reports about the handling of minutes from British PM Tony Blair's pre-war talks with intel officials, known colloquially as the Downing Street Memo (DSM), or Memos, considering that more have surfaced.
In a story on the DSM's "confirmation," the leftish indie news site Raw Story notes the documents' origin: "The documents are transcribed photocopies in PDF format and were acquired from a British source and corroborated by Michael Smith, the journalist who first received the original leaked memos. This site validated them through an independent source and with Smith." Raw Story makes no hint of a conspiratorial interpretation, nor did the month-old liberal advocacy Downing Street Memo blog. Meanwhile, liberal Tom Engelhart notes the MSM's "complete lack of interest" in the Downing Street documents.
But a 9/18 report from the AP also mentions that Smith "destroy[ed] the originals" -- which sent up the red flags. One of the first to challenge these documents is Ed Morrissey from Captain's Quarters: "This, in fact, could very well be another case of 'fake but accurate,' where documents get created after the fact to support preconceived notions about what happened in the past. One fact certainly stands out -- Michael Smith cannot authenticate the copies. And absent that authentication, they lose their value as evidence of anything." The post brings many traffic, and Morrissey adds 5 updates between noon Sunday and this a.m.
Another blogger pushing the story early was Charles Johnson from Little Green Footballs; a typical LGF post will rate several dozen to several hundred comments; the last we checked, this one has 697.
Liberal Kevin Drum seems to roll his eyes, writing, "unlike the Killian memos that were at the center of Rathergate, there are quite a few principals in this case who either wrote or received these memos and therefore have absolute knowledge of whether or not they're genuine. ... So far, not a single one of these people has claimed they're fake." Oliver Willis thinks along the same lines: "Denizens of Planet Wingnuttia are now claiming that the Downing Street Memo isn't real. They were so right last time about those made up talking points, how could you not trust them?"
For its part, Power Line is more wary: "Given what we now know about journalistic standards in many quarters, and the lack of any meaningful authentication of the Downing Street memos, it is not surprising that some critics are questioning them. But, as I said, I will be very surprised if their content turns out not to be genuine."
TRACKBACKS: Hagel-Force Winds
Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:
- No one story brought about the swarm this weekend, as bloggers were busy following Internet-grown stories. But more than a few paid attention to Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), who criticized the WH and said: "The reality is that we're losing in Iraq." Many link to an AFP via Yahoo! report; some go with the U.S. News version.
>> Neo-libertarian QandO, one of the few conservatives to offer commentary yet, is displeased: "Hagel voted for the war in Iraq, and now, when the going is a bit tough, hasn't the sand to tough it out."
>> Liberal MyDD writes, "while it is good to see some cracks showing in the Republican façade over Iraq, how often over the past month has a comment by a major political figure or other been the big political news story of the day? ... As much as I participate in these spin wars myself and as much as I will continue to do so, it is not hard to see how this sort of inane "Gotcha!" politics can turn off tens of millions of Americans to the point where they don't even bother becoming involved in the process."
>> More: Happy Furry Puppy Story Time; Corrente; Ranting Profs; Daily Kos; Oliver Willis; Eschaton; The Light of Reason; Raising Kaine.
DURBIN: No Escape
Nearly a week after his controversial Senate floor remarks (see 6/16 Blogometer), Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) remains a lightning rod for controversy. Right-leaning Little Green Footballs and left-leaning TAPPED both take a look at his ongoing troubles.
A blogger on RedState: "Okay, I've read Durbin's non-apology, and it's nowhere near enough. In the first place, the Distinguished Senator does not apologize for what he said, but only apologized if others misunderstood what he said. This, essentially, says that given the chance, Durbin would say it again, if only the rest of us were smart enough to understand what he truly meant."
Liberal Seattle journalist Dave Neiwert: "It's quite clear, especially in full context, what Durbin was saying: That torturers who violate basic human rights and standards of decency are the antithesis of everything this country, at its best, is supposed to stand for; it is the domain of history's most horrid monsters. But that's not how the right is describing it. According to them, Durbin was claiming that all our soldiers are Nazis."
And lefty "Jeanne D'Arc" of Body and Soul writes in a post: "Can you tell, without peeking at the linked articles, which group of torturers is on our side?"
CONYERS: Does Anyone Even Remember Conyers Recently Hanging Out With LaRouche?
Charles Johnson from Little Green Footballs: "At his blog, Congressman John Conyers, Jr., the Democrat from Michigan who sponsored Thursday's disgraceful, antisemitic mock impeachment hearing, is thanking the 'activists' at Democratic Underground -- the most openly anti-American far left site on the web, notorious for its sheer insanity." Johnson demonstrates: "Here's a typical thread at DU, in which the inmates work themselves up into a frenzy over a hare-brained idea that C-SPAN is trying to install CIA viruses on their computers: 'If You Watched C-SPAN'S DSM LIVE THUR - TROJAN ALERT.'"
DC-based conservative Bill Ardolino has a round-up of right-blogosphere reactions, accusing the Conyers crowd of "lunacy" and including "credit where it's due" comments re: DNC chair Howard Dean's measured response. Righty Pejman Yousefzadeh : "It's nice and noteworthy to see that Howard Dean is denouncing the dip into anti-Semitism taken in connection with yesterday's faux hearings on Capitol Hill."
NRO's Media Blog notes the divergent reports on Conyers' unofficial hearing on the DSM. The Washington Post reported that ex-CIA agent Ray McGovern "declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration 'neocons'" and said "Israel should not be considered an ally..." But the New York Times wrote only: "'Thanks to the Downing Street minutes, we now know the truth,' said Ray McGovern, a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years who helped organize a group of other retired intelligence officers to oppose the war." Spruiell is at least a little surprised to be praising the Post's Dana Milbank, whose reports many conservative bloggers regard as biased against them. Spruiell: "For their consistent unwillingness to report on the wave of insanity that has afflicted the Democrats, the New York Times is the subject of this week's Underreported News."
Righty Tom Maguire: "The new Public editor of the Times is Byron Calame ... I am sure he would welcome an opportunity to explain why the DNC chairman is disavowing anti-Semitic pamphlets and remarks from within his own party and the Times is ignoring it." Maguire runs Calame's e-mail address.
From the left, The Nation's Marc Cooper has a different take on the Milbank column: "Milbank might have ventured a bridge too far in his acerbic assault on Congressman John Conyers hearing on the Downing Street Memos. But the column is funny."
Lefty prof Juan Cole attempts to salvage the criticism of U.S./Israeli foreign policy: "American Jews were less likely to support the Iraq war than the general US population. So no one should blame 'the Jews' for the Iraq War. Mainly they should blame Bush and Cheney and Delay and Frist. But the case for an Iraq War was significantly bolstered by American supporters of Ariel Sharon (by no means all of them Jewish) high in the Bush administration."
Hawkish centrist Roger L. Simon wonders if the Dem Party is "breeding a new generation of Father Coughlins."
WHITE HOUSE '08: Running The Gauntlet -- One Long, Slow, Drawn-Out Gauntlet
Daily Kos has roasted Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) over his support for the recent bankruptcy bill, terming him "D-MNBA," as he is again mocked today: "He's got the inside track to president of MBNA. But of the United States? Well, there must a couple dozen credit card executives that would vote for him."
Re: Gov. Jeb Bush's plan to make further inquiry in the Schiavo case, JustOneMinute is incredulous: "Who is the audience for this?"
The New York Times reported last Friday: "Republican and conservative activists are behind a vigorous campaign to promote a controversial new biography about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, with some even suggesting that the book will help dash any presidential aspirations she might have."
- Center-left Kausfiles responds: "The real story -- too subtle for a paper that has to dispatch a correspondent to cover conservatives the way they'd send a foreign correspondent to India -- is that the right-wing reception of the new Hillary book has been wary and remarkably hostile."
- Conservative satirist Ace of Spaces HQ: "So, conservative bloggers are revolted by the idiotic slander, the conservative tabloid New York Post dismisses it as an amateurish smear, and even Smokin' Joe Conason acknowledges this. But not the New York Times. Oh, no. As far as their liberal-coccooned Upper West Side audience is concerned, we're "promoting" the Dickens out of it."
In multiple posts this weekend, Hugh Hewitt keeps the pressure on Durbin with links and analysis. He is not happy with John McCain's response to Durbin's remark, but neither is he surprised: "Senator McCain's mild handling of a gross slander on the American military is another step backward in his campaign for the GOP nomination -- even though post 'judges-deal,' his support among GOP primary voters is already low. It is tough to fall off a floor."
BOLTON: Just Plame Silly?
"Hunter" at Daily Kos: "It is middlingly possible that members of the Bush Administration knew Mrs. Valerie Wilson as wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson. It is less possible that more than a tight handful of persons -- if that -- would have known Valerie Plame, covert CIA operative. The highest crime in the Wilson/Plame case likely does not revolve principally around who, precisely, shopped the information about Plame's covert status to Novak and other D.C. journalists: instead, it rests with who told that political operative -- the one with a full rolodex and the skill to select presumed-friendly leak points -- that Plame was a CIA operative in the first place, and worthy of attack. Among the White House political staff, there was precisely zero need to know this information -- and if classified intelligence procedures were being followed, no opportunities to find out." More: "It is undisputed among all parties that Plame's covert work involved principally the gathering of intelligence related to weapons of mass destruction, which put her at an important nexus of operations in the runup to the Iraq War. At another nexus point across town, during the same period, was John Bolton."
BLOGS VS. THE MSM I: South Knox Busted
Over the weekend, blog readers learned the identify of liberal TN blogger South Knox Bubba, who had previously written his blog anonymously. He turns out to be a "bank software designer" named Randy Neal, and he reveals this himself in a post occasioned by an e-mailed threat of outing by Knoxville alt-weekly publisher Brian Conley. Neal runs Conley's e-mail, as well.
Knoxville News blogger Michael Silence links to statewide reactions and comments: "I know people who know him. I never asked who he is. I saw no compelling reason to out him. The question was even posed from time to time at the KNS whether we should try and out him, and the answer always came back to, 'why?'"
Linking to S.K. Bubba, Atrios writes: "[T]his situation isn't about the right or expectations of anonymity, it's about a power imbalance between the owner of a local newspaper and some guy with a blog, and that newspaper owner using anonymity as means of intimidation. What a f---ing wanker."
Early this a.m., Neal posted in full an e-mailed apology from Conley: "As a public figure I have to accept criticism of my actions and of the content of my publications."
BLOGS VS. THE MSM II: Everyone's A Voyeur As They're Watching Me Watch You Watch Me Right Now
At the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington has been running a "Russert Watch," where readers are invited to critique "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert's lines of questioning and "formula." This weekend, Atrios gives it a push.
The New York Times' David Cay Johnston trades e-mails with the bloggers at QandO, who post excerpts and add commentary. QandO had been critical of a recent series by Johnston on class in America.
CASUALTY HOAX: Watching The Blogosphere Self-Correct
Sometime last week, a website the Blogometer was not previously aware of called TBRNews.org posted a report by a person named Brian Harring. He writes: "There is excellent reason to believe that the Department of Defense is deliberately not reporting a significant number of the dead in Iraq." Harring purports to report, "The DoD lists currently being very quietly circulated indicate almost 9,000 dead" U.S. soldiers.
Not long after, ESPN personality Jim Lampley wrote about Harring's claim in a post titled "The Ultimate Deception?" at the Huffington Post.
Word spread throughout the blogosphere from there, with Echidne of the Snakes, the Liberal Avenger and The American Street and others posting it credulously.
Before long, diarists at Daily Kos (see here and here) started warning others to stay away from the story, and bloggers such as Steve Soto and Seeing the Forest spread the word.
Pat Kneisler from casualty-counting iCasualties.org helps settle the point, writing: "[T]he Bush administration isn't GOOD ENOUGH to hide that many deaths. They haven't managed to hide Halliburton's over-runs. They haven't managed to hide the troop equipment shortages. And they haven't managed to hide their own ineptness in the whole occupation. Somehow the truth has a way of seeping out between the cracks."
Without linking to offenders, Daily Kos adds: "So please, just stop it. You do yourself and the anti-war effort no good by running with unsupported conspiracy theories that contradict the very hard reality-based work cataloging the effects of the war by our very own side."
THE NEW MEDIA: What Took So Long?
The Los Angeles Times announces that it has already suspended its "wikitorial" experiment: "Unfortunately, we have had to remove this feature, at least temporarily, because a few readers were flooding the site with inappropriate material. Thanks and apologies to the thousands of people who logged on in the right spirit."
- Jeff Jarvis comments: "Wikis are about collaboration; you may disagree with your fellows but the mutual goal is clear. A wikitorial is bound to turn into a tug-of-war. So I suggested in a listserv discussion of it that there should be two wiki versions of the editorial: one for proponents of the editorial's stand, one for opponents; let them put their best stuff forward and may the best side win. It seemed to be that this would be like an Oxford debate, brought to software."
- Dan Gillmor, on the wikitorials: "The trolls of this world are happiest doing damage. I wish the newspaper had gone ahead with its experiment, however, because in the end there are more good people than bad -- and eventually the good folks would have made the vandalism a pointless exercise."
Mark Glaser at USC-Annenberg's OJR has a column on the Contagious Media web traffic contest, including the fake pre-launch blog magazine Blogebrity, which came in 3rd. The Blogometer looked into Blogebrity and Contagious Media on 5/20 and 5/25.
- Jarvis again, on Contagious Media: "Sometimes, once you find out that these things are hoaxes, don't you feel duped and used? ... The poor fools in the press who reported on it as if it were real -- and the readers who believed them -- surely felt used and abused."
Fresno Bee's Matt Thompson writes at Snark Market: "All right. I'm throwing down my official entry in the Name-the-Unofficial-Journalist sweepstakes. For those of you who have lives beyond journalism, interactive media enthusiasts like Dan Gillmor and JD Lasica have been in a bit of a muddle to find a term for the many, many folks who are now producing works of journalism, but are not employed by any media organizations." Among those being propagated now are "citizen journalism," "personal media," "stand-alone journalism" and others. Thompson suggests "street reporter."
MISCELLANY: News Or Something Like It
Weekend updates:
- Liberal Al Rodgers' Sunday TV talk round-up.
- Conservative Mark Kilmer's look at the Sunday shows, here and here.
- Lefty Matt Yglesias' look at the op-ed pages.
Oliver Willis received hate mail from a reader using the N-word. The reader sent it from an identifiable AOL account. Willis, who is black, posts the address to his blog. Jesus' General sends a twisted, irony-laden e-mail to the AOLer: "Sure, we might be inbred, toothless, backward mule molesters, but, by God, we're white."
Balloon Juice starts a new "book meme."
In a follow-up to Dem Chris Bowers' thoughts on liberal and conservative blogs last week (see the Blogometer on 6/16 and 6/17) GOPer Patrick Ruffini asserts that Bowers has it exactly backward: "Bowers trashes the conservative blogosphere as 'aristocratic'" and 'anti-meritocratic.' But if anything, the tables are now turned. Ironically, it is the liberal blogosphere that has adopted the more corporate, top-down approach to blogging: to be heard, you must go to Kos, Atrios, and Josh Marshall. This has the effect of aggrandizing a few superstar bloggers at the top, but leaving smaller liberal blogs scrounging for the all-too-rare link from the top dogs. If you wish to strike out on your own, starting a blog with a flavor all its own, your support structure and your chances of getting noticed will be greater on the right."
THOUGHT OF THE DAY: From Kropotkin To Hobbes
UCLA prof Brad DeLong, on the death of e-mail: "There has been a big change on the Internet in the past decade. A decade ago, the Internet seemed to be a place that exemplified the left-anarchist utopian doctrines of Prince Kropotkin -- friendly and helpful people coming together to create things for the common good, expecting that their contributions would be more than matched by those of others and that all would benefit. Today? Today the Internet seems dominated by people like -- well, like the proprietors of the Motley Fool, who don't care how much ... time their clients' emails waste as long as they can make a few [$$$] by selling her registration info. It is, to me, surprising how *many* people there are out on the Internet who do not care how large a burden their actions impose on others as long as they hold some promise of gaining them a trivial advantage. It's the State of Nature out there."
LEST WE FORGET: Fricking Lasers
The Blogometer wants a Solar Death Ray, although we're not sure they'd be legal in DC. The FAQ explains how the builders manage to harness the destructive power of sunlight. See the gallery, where the solar death ray destroys a shoe, a cell phone, Marshmallow Peeps, a computer mouse, a bag of Doritos, and other common household items.
Posted by at June 20, 2005 12:00 PM
The Watergate · 600 New Hampshire Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20037
202-739-8400 · fax 202-833-8069
NationalJournal.com is an Atlantic Media publication.
