While I know I shouldn't be supprised anymore, Maureen Dowd still amazes me with her acerbic dogmatism on anything the Bush administration does.

Instead of trying to destroy AARP, Republicans should be signing up the seniors' lobby to find Osama.

AARP's super-relentless intelligence network is certainly better than that doddering C.I.A's. Osama has to have turned 50, and AARP somehow knows where everyone who has turned 50 lives.

But no. The same Republicans who used to love AARP when it helped them pass the president's prescription drug plan now hate AARP because it is against the president's plan to privatize Social Security.

Just to keep the record straight Ms Dowd, the AARP was drug kicking and writhing to get on board the prescription drug plan. Let me also add that AARP is the largest liberal lobby in washington, and that AARP gets it's power from its ability scare, then herd old people to the polls to vote Democrat.

US News & World Report has a good story by John Leo on how the MSM pagages the news for consumption, while to their dismay the bloggers "un-package" it.

[M]ost people realize that the news media do not just report. They frame and package the news. Stories reflect the mind-set and values of the newsroom. This packaged world is now under heavy assault, partly because different packaging is available (Fox News, talk radio), partly because a strong unpackaging industry has arisen (bloggers, bolder anti-Establishment voices in academia and traditional media).

In the Eason Jordan story, we have something new: retroframing, or the sad attempt to reimpose a discredited frame. Jordan, CNN's chief news executive, said something on a panel (we still don't know exactly what), the gist of which was that U.S. soldiers had deliberately shot at journalists in Iraq. This was a serious charge, particularly coming from one of CNN's high priests, but the major media essentially looked the other way for many days, thus signaling that nothing important had happened. But bloggers descended quickly, demanding to see the unreleased videotape of the panel and asking about Jordan's evidence. Jordan "walked [the story] back," as one commentator said, meaning that he softened what he apparently had said. But he resigned, essentially because of the case made by the bloggers.

Blog flap. Here's the retroframing: Some mainstream media fell back on their traditional view of bloggers as inaccurate, upstart nobodies who dare to criticize their betters. Last week, for instance, the New York Times, which had looked the other way for two weeks, ran a story dripping with disdain. Headlined "Bloggers as News Media Trophy Hunters," it offered a simple-minded view of bloggers as wild conservatives out to collect liberal scalps. The story was laced with quotes assuring us that bloggers are a "lynch mob" of "salivating morons," fanning fears of "the growing power of rampant, unedited dialogue" on the Internet (as opposed to the completely reliable and unrampant reports in mainstream media).

Why some in mainstream media keep depicting bloggers as inaccurate is a mystery. In the blogs I follow, accuracy is crucially important, and errors have to be admitted quickly, usually on the day of the mistake. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com suggests that mainstream media might want to hire some bloggers to check their stories before publication. This is a cheeky but polite reminder that bloggers are in the checking business and big media should get used to having someone looking over their shoulder.

Thankyou for your unbiased opinion John Leo.

For the most part criticism of blogs from the MSM has long been abusive. The Eason Jordan's exit at CNN seemed to push many over the line of self-control unleashing a tirade of vituperrious attacks.

But not all media journalists have such ill feeling towards bloggers. Peggy Noonan has a column in todays Opinion Journal that is refreshing, and points the problems behind the name calling the elite media has been engaged in this week.

When you hear name-calling like what we've been hearing from the elite media this week, you know someone must be doing something right. The hysterical edge makes you wonder if writers for newspapers and magazines and professors in J-schools don't have a serious case of freedom envy.
The bloggers have that freedom. They have the still pent-up energy of a liberated citizenry, too. The MSM doesn't. It has lost its old monopoly on information. It is angry.

But MSM criticism of the blogosphere misses the point, or rather points.

Blogging changes how business is done in American journalism. The MSM isn't over. It just can no longer pose as if it is The Guardian of Established Truth. The MSM is just another player now. A big one, but a player.

The blogosphere isn't some mindless eruption of wild opinion. That isn't their power. This is their power:

Ms Noonan goes on to discuss seven items of power and freedom that bloggers have that the elite media is angry about. Here are the first three, but read the whole article and her predictions in conclusion.

1. They use the tools of journalists (computer, keyboard, a spirit of inquiry, a willingness to ask the question) and of the Internet (Google, LexisNexis) to look for and find facts that have been overlooked, ignored or hidden. They look for the telling quote, the ignored statistic, the data that have been submerged. What they are looking for is information that is true. When they get it they post it and include it in the debate. This is a public service.

2. Bloggers, unlike reporters at elite newspapers and magazines, are independent operators. They are not, and do not have to be, governed by mainstream thinking. Nor do they have to accept the directives of an editor pushing an ideology or a publisher protecting his friends. Bloggers have the freedom to decide on their own when a story stops being a story. They get to decide when the search for facts is over. They also decide on their own when the search for facts begins. It was a blogger at the World Economic Forum, as we all know, who first reported the Eason Jordan story. It was bloggers, as we all know, who pursued it. Matt Drudge runs a news site and is not a blogger, but what was true of him at his beginning (the Monica Lewinsky story, he decided, is a story) is true of bloggers: It's a story if they say it is. This is a public service.

3. Bloggers have an institutional advantage in terms of technology and form. They can post immediately. The items they post can be as long or short as they judge to be necessary. Breaking news can be one sentence long: "Malkin gets Barney Frank earwitness report." In newspapers you have to go to the editor, explain to him why the paper should have another piece on the Eason Jordan affair, spend a day reporting it, only to find that all that's new today is that reporter Michelle Malkin got an interview with Barney Frank. That's not enough to merit 10 inches of newspaper space, so the Times doesn't carry what the blogosphere had 24 hours ago. In the old days a lot of interesting information fell off the editing desk in this way. Now it doesn't. This is a public service.

Captain Ed has done an excellent expanded piece on this at Captain's Quarters with links to, and comments about some angry elites. Also Michelle Malkin has a good post after being unfairly slapped around by the media elites.

A little more than a month ago after a report of the independant investigation into CBS News' 60 Minutes was completed, Lislie Moonves issued a statement blaming employees involved in production of the news segment. Executive producer Josh Howard and others were asked to resign.

Moonves sail Mr Howard, "did little to assert his role as the producer ultimately responsible for the broadcast and everything in it. This mistake dealt a tremendous blow to the credibility of 60 Minutes Wednesday and to CBS News in general."

It was reported Tuesday that Howard isn't going peacfully or quietly.

Five weeks later, the crisis is not yet behind Mr. Moonves. And far from resolving the problem of the network's credibility, the independent report commissioned by CBS appears instead to be leading to a confrontation, with defenders of both the ousted CBS staffers involved in the debacle and top CBS management asserting two different truths from the same document.

Mr. Howard and two other ousted CBS staffers—his top deputy, Mary Murphy, and CBS News senior vice president Betsy West—haven't resigned. And sources close to Mr. Howard said that before any resignation comes, the 23-year CBS News veteran is demanding that the network retract Mr. Moonves' remarks, correct its official story line and ultimately clear his name.

Mr. Howard, those sources said, has hired a lawyer to develop a breach-of-contract suit against the network. Ms. Murphy and Ms. West have likewise hired litigators, according to associates of theirs, and all three remain CBS employees and collect weekly salaries from the company that asked them to tender their resignations.

None would agree to participate in this article.

But Mr. Howard's complaint about Mr. Moonves' remarks could pose a serious problem for CBS. Sources close to Mr. Howard said he believes that the report—which was assembled by an outside team of former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh and former Associated Press head Louis Boccardi Jr.—contradicts Mr. Moonves' statement about Mr. Howard's share of the blame.

Mr. Howard also believes, those sources said, that the report itself excludes evidence that would implicate top management at CBS and restore Mr. Howard's reputation in the television news business.

Mr. Howard has also indicated to colleagues that he would subpoena specific CBS documents, including the e-mails of top executives. That might shed further light on what members of management were saying to each other on Friday, Sept. 10, two days after the segment aired—a day that Mr. Heyward and Mr. Schwartz were making important decisions about CBS's defense strategy.

Until Mr Howard's contract runs out it appears to be a stalemate for the present. If CBS continues to pay Howard until the contract expires then I have a hunch there will be a deflamation suit.

Power Line also has the story from another source.

This article from WSWS (World Socialist Web Site) as hateful as it is, is no worse than many US news media.

Gonzales confirmed: war criminal to head US Justice Department

5 February 2005 - On February 3, the United States Senate confirmed former White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales to be the new attorney general. With the vote, an individual closely associated with the most criminal actions and decisions of the Bush administration will fill the chief law office in the land.

A total of 36 Democratic Senators opposed the nomination, but the vote against Gonzales was largely for show. The Democratic leadership had already declared before the vote that the party would not attempt to filibuster the nomination, thus ensuring that Gonzales would be confirmed. A filibuster would require the support of only 41 of the Senate's 44 Democrats and would have prevented Gonzales from receiving an up-or-down vote.

Sort of proves Sigmadog's theory from one of my earllier posts here.