Last Thursday afternoon I clicked on Drudge and found the allegation that the documents CBS used in the Bush National Guard story on 60 Minutes Wednesday night were forged, leading me to Powerline to examine the evidence myself. By 5:00 that evening Brit Hume had the story on Fox Special Report. It was even more astonishing to hear it reported on ABC radio news a few hours later.
We are witnessing an awesome revolution. Before blogs, the only recourse the average person had to respond to stories in the MSM was the letter to the editor, the phone call to the switchboard, or the e-mail to the show. With all of these options, there was no guarantee that we would receive a response or that any objections would ever see the light of day. MSM held all the cards.
Blogs have been changing that for a while, but never before have we witnessed the transition of a major story from blogs to the MSM within the course of a few hours. I have been mesmerized watching every allegation by CBS be torn to shreds in the course of a few days and most important being reported on talk radio, in print, and on the networks.
This is a stunning return of power to the average person. We can no longer be held hostage by the bias of a few key anchors and the stories they "want to tell." The Blogosphere, with access to the combined knowledge of average people from all walks of life, has become a powerful voice that can't be ignored.
It may be the best thing to happen for democracy since the establishment of a free press.
In the same vein, I saw the following exchange between Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, and Brigitte Quinn of Fox News this morning:
Kristol:......The people it is hurting is CBS News which is stonewalling and refusing to be transparent and open about these, I'm quite convinced now, these forged documents that they depended on for their report.
Quinn: It almost seems like more of a controversy about reporting as opposed to a controversy about President Bush's service.
Kristol: Yeah, I think it's moved from a controversy about the President to a controversy about reporting and it's an interesting and important one. You know, we shouldn't denigrate that it's a big moment, I think, in the....maybe another step along the way delegitimizing or the desanctifying, let's say, of the mainstream networks, the rise to importance of the blogs, which the mainstream media still continues not to understand.
The LA Times had a pretty good piece yesterday detailing how this issue came out of the blogs to the MSM an event the Post or the NYT and the Dallas Morning News are now pretty much challenging CBS, but they still sort of denigrate the blogs. You know, "These anonymous sources. How can you depend on them?" But, it's just not true.
Go to HughHewitt.com or Beldar or on other blogs and they provide their biographies and many of them are lawyers and then they get in touch with or are contacted by genuine experts in typography and computers and documents and all this sort of thing.
The level of discourse on the blogs has actually been higher than the level of discourse on the main......certainly on the networks or in general the MSM and they're going to be right. These are forgeries.
There's no question the documents are forgeries. Now the story needs to move to who was behind the forgeries, (The American Spectator is on the case. Link via Instapundit.), and what CBS is going to do about it. Stonewalling is no longer an option. In addition to the links above watch Ratherbiased who also provides links for websites where you can add your voice to call on CBS to come clean, (scroll down.)
Personally the whole affair has left me a little depressed. Since we're employers I no longer have the option of blogging in my PJ's. (Before the advent of employees and daily UPS pick ups I confess it was an option I took advantage of.)
By the way, the NARN guys are subbing on air right now for Dennis Prager, (11:00-2:00 central). You can listen live here. Kudos to NARN and especially to Powerline for breaking this major story. Kudos to their readers for providing the information required to make the case.
