There's been a lot of talk in the traditional media about bloggers getting credentials to cover the Scooter Libby case. Some of that coverage has been overly defensive (no surprise there), just look at Miles O'Brien's drippingly defensive report from last Friday's CNN This Morning.
It strikes me as I look down the potential witness list (which includes the names of 26 journalists from news organizations including The Washington Post, New York Times, Time Magazine, The New Republic, The New Yorker, NBC News, Wall Street Journal, CBS News, MSNBC News, Chicago Sun-Times, Newsday and Newsweek) that this is independent media's story.
The major news organizations are so enmeshed in the story, having become a party to the proceedings, that this is an opportunity for citizen media to fill in the role of news reporters in addition to commentators. The powers that be in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., were smart to invite citizens into the proceedings to witness firsthand rather than comment on what the mainstream is reporting. We'll be watching to see how the coverage unfolds.
So far, I see a great deal of care being taken on the part of the MBA bloggers. Let's hope this experiment proves successful and opens the doors to other institutions.
2 comments:
Wen - great fascinating stuff perfect for procrastinating on invitation lists. And, you can just hear in your head the lovely stream of four letter words that I uttered when, at the end of the CNN piece, Jackie whatever her name is had to put in a plug for her caveats as to why, IN HER UNEDITED OPINION ABOUT BLOGS NOT BEING SUBJECT TO MSM EDITORS, people should be careful with blogs. OH MY FOURLETTERWORD GOD. She so does not GET IT. That's PRECISELY WHY blogs are being discussed, DUH.
Indeed! I was embarrassed to call myself a traditional journalist after that horrendously biased reporting job.
Happy invitation writing!
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