Big media, little media

Here's why the mainstream press hates blogs: the bloggers do their research better than the journalists.

The Monk worked as a journalist back in the day for one of the best college newspapers in the country. If that sounds like so much BS, it's not. The difference between high school journalism and college journalism is vast. And the college paper I worked on was wholly independent of both its university and any student funding. But I also know how lazy journalists can be: from failing to properly state the score of the football game you covered (one of my colleagues) to failing to spell-check headlines to failing to dig past the first person available for the press after city council or student government meetings, the press fails to dig deep. Worse, it fails to do its research.

Case in point, as shown on the Balloon-Juice blog and on the Kerry Spot on National Review Online (see 1:23 p.m. and 9:10 a.m. entries): the national media is under some delusion that Democrats never questioned a Republican presidential candidate's war heroism the way the Republicans have cast doubt on Kerry.

As Balloon Juice (link supra shows, the Boston Globe had a what if: "IMAGINE IF supporters of Bill Clinton had tried in 1996 to besmirch the military record of his opponent, Bob Dole . . ."

But there's no reason to "imagine," just check out an old copy of The Nation. Or see the hatchet job Sid Blumenthal tried to do against Bush-41 (see the Kerry Spot link cited above). Blumenthal based his "legitimate questions" surrounding Bush's heroism on the accounts of one man, not 250+ vets. Thus, as Kerry Spot blogger Jim Geraghty says:

Now, one can believe that Sid Blumenthal's article, citing Mierzejewski and some differing versions of Bush's story raises legitimate questions about the former president. And one can believe that the Swift Boat Vets for Truth, all 264 of them and their sworn affidavits, along with Kerry's Christmas in Cambodia story, raise legitimate questions about Kerry. But it is hard to contend that the former is legitimate hard-nosed journalism while the latter is just a smear campaign.

The Boston Globe not only has its own archives, but has access to the 'Net, the Nexis database and the NY Times archives (same company owns both). So why are the editorial page editors so lazy that they bring up these "what if" scenarios without checking to see if they actually occurred?