June 6, 2003

The Continuing Crisis

The Continuing Crisis
So, Howell Raines has left the New York Times building, and the NYT's credibility crisis has reached its nadir, right? Soon, the Jayson Blair fiasco and its fallout will be all be behind Times, right? It's clear sailing from here, right?

Wrong, bucko.

The Jayson Blair scandal of fabrication and plagiarism was only one piece of the Times' ongoing credibility crisis.

Long before Blair, weblogs had revealed how many of the NYT's polls were reported in a way that was, ahem, short of the truth and spun for political advantage. Bloggers exposed NYT columnist Paul Krugman's lucrative ties to scandal-plagued Enron and continue to expose how he lies about the Bush administration's tax policy. Bloggers and an Internet news site exposed how the Times lied on its front page about global warming in Alaska and other news and commentary sites exposed how the Times lied when it said Henry Kissinger was against the Iraq war. Even now, the blogosphere continues to ridicule NYT columnist Maureen Dowd for altering a quote from President Bush in order to alter its meaning - a scurrilous tactic now called "Dowdification."

And that's just the beginning. Raines is gone, but the blogosphere isn't. The NYT - and the rest of Big Journalism - are now being watched, 'round the clock, by bloggers from the political Left, Center and Right, and errors, bias and spin will be exposed.

It's often said that the press is a free society's watchdog on its government. But who watches the watchers? Thanks to the Internet and blogging software that has lowered the cost of publishing almost to the vanishing point, the answer to that question is We, The People. As it usually is when things are set right in America.