All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Each week we invite someone from outside PE to weigh in with their thoughts about CBS News and the media at large. This week, we turned to National Review Online’s Jim Geraghty, who writes the TKS blog on National Review Online, and contributes to another group blog, OnTapblog.com. Below, he discusses where progress in the blogosphere has been achieved, and where it hasn’t. As always, the opinions expressed and factual assertions made in “Outside Voices” are those of the author, not ours, and we seek a wide variety of voices. Here's Jim:

Détente With Mordor

Back in the really fun days of blogging, summer 2004, a bunch of folks typing on the Internet had a bone to pick with a particular network news division over a quartet of memos that had inspired a wee bit of controversy. At that time I wrote, "Sure, the Sauronic Big Eye of CBS is on the verge of being toppled by the Pajamahadeen…"

("Sauronic Big Eye" was a reference to the network's logo and the villain from “Lord of the Rings,” and “pajamahadeen” was my attempt at an intimidating moniker based on former CBS executive Jonathan Klein's comment that the bloggers questioning the memos were just "a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas.")

At the time, the network had earned its comparison to a giant flaming embodiment of evil because of its stubborn refusal to acknowledge that it's memos allegedly from 1972 had a striking resemblance to Microsoft Word from 2004, as well as anchor Dan Rather's on-air dismissal of his critics as mere "partisan political operators." CBS ultimately admitted it could not verify the origin of the documents, and revealed that their source had misled the reporters on where he had obtained them.

It's about a year and a half later, and we've seen two differing trends in the antagonists in that fight. One is that CBS News has gotten a bit better and more responsible; and the other is that a significant portion of the blogosphere has, I humbly suggest, gone sour.

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