Open Source Journalism

jvm writes "Markos of Daily Kos wrote today of what he describes as the legacy of blogging: open source. Not software, but the philosophy. From the article: "When I'm asked about blogging's legacy, I talk about open source. Open source politics, open source activism, open source journalism -- the aggregation of thousands on behalf of a common cause." Relatedly, egoff writes "You might have seen some coverage of Jeff Gannon, a conservative reporter who lobbed softball questions during White House press briefings. It was discovered that he was using an alias to get past White House security. The language of open source development is used throughout their description of the reporting process. At Poynter Online, journalists discussing this story have compared the random blog readers who did the bulk of this research to "what Woodstein did back in the day.""

Comments

Sounds like Communism to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

When everything is open and free, you have communism.

Think about it.

Re:Sounds like Communism to me.

[Soko]

Yeah.

I read all about that in our GNUspaper. Commrade Stallman would be proud. :-P

Soko.

Re:Sounds like Communism to me.

[MikeCapone]

And real communism would be bad because...?

But anyway, back on topic: for real open source news, check out WikiNews.org, a sub-project of Wikipedia.

Re:Sounds like Communism to me.

[peterx]

But this one communism is defintely working better.

Open source??

[CurlyG]

In what way was the embaressing tale of Gannon related to open source journalism? From everything I've heard about it he was a completely deliberate right-wing plant.

About the only question he didn't ask was

Mr. Burns, your campaign seems to have the
momentum of a runaway freight train. Why are you so popular?

Re:Open source??

[argmanah]

In what way was the embaressing tale of Gannon related to open source journalism?

To answer your question, you need but read the article linked to in the story. Basically, the reason Gannon was exposed is because so many Bloggers (open source journalists) started writing about it, until there were so many articles about it on blogs that the mainstream media had no choice but to pick up the story.

The Gannon story is just an example of the power of open source journalism.

Re:Open source??

[mcc]

Basically, the reason Gannon was exposed is because so many Bloggers (open source journalists) started writing about it, until there were so many articles about it on blogs that the mainstream media had no choice but to pick up the story.

Sounds exactly like how right-wing talk radio worked in the 90s.

Of course, the Gannon thing is actually true, as opposed to the stories about Bill Clinton shooting DNC chairman Ron Brown in the back of the head. But truth doesn't really matter here. What matters is that functionally, the exact same thing happened. A concentrated faction of non-mainstream media sources hammered on one specific issue until the very fact they were talking about it so much caused it to qualify as "news", at which point the mainstream media picked it up. The presence or absence of facts is entirely coincidental to the manner in which this mechanism works.

So is Rush Limbaugh "open source journalism"?

Re:Open source??

[_KiTA_]

It's important beacuse a bunch of Bloggers, who are mostly people working in their spare time, were able to do the investigative journalism and discover that not only was this guy a Whitehouse plant, he's a flaming hypocrite who has ties to the swift boat vetrans for slander people.

Journalism that NONE of the major news outfits were willing to do.

Re:Open source??

[damian cosmas]

"In what way was the embaressing tale of Gannon related to open source journalism?"

Because the better example (Powerline/Rather) works in the "wrong" direction, politically!

Re:Open source??

[pcidevel]

I'm very pissed at Kos for writing this today because for the last several weeks I've been intending to write in my dKos Diary about how the blogging of the Left has open sourced politics.

It's no where near exactly like right-wing radio in the 90s if you ask me, because right-wing radio still required a huge (and expensive) infrastructure that is no longer needed.

The real news behind the Gannon story isn't that bloggers blogged about it, but that it was mainly the work of blog READERS. It wasn't Kos or Atrios that really broke the story, it was the people who post comments and diaries at their sites. Those comments and diaries can be posted by anyone, so journalism is becoming much more open source. Regular people post comments, the best of those comments filter through to the site admins, the best of the stuff from the various sites filters through to the mainstream media.

I'm hoping that Dean realizes this is the OTHER legacy of his "sleepless summer", not only has he taken the Democrats back to real grass-roots fund raising, but he has also inadvertantly created the setup needed for open sourcing the message of the Democratic party. Instead of needing one brilliant campaign advisor with all the best ideas in the world, the Democrats now have thousands of relatively mediocre campaign advisors who each may have only one great idea. But if you can skim the Great Ideas from those people who otherwise have mediocre ideas the rest of the time, you end up with a deluge of Great Ideas, much more than any one brilliant campaign advisor will ever be able to give you. It's exactly the Cathedral and the Bazaar, but taken from the arena of computers and moved into politics.

Re:Open source??

[SpaceLifeForm]

So is Rush Limbaugh "open source journalism"?

Open something, that's for sure. But not open source journalism. He gets paid.

Re:Open source??

[mcc]

It's no where near exactly like right-wing radio in the 90s if you ask me, because right-wing radio still required a huge (and expensive) infrastructure that is no longer needed.

So what's up with all those donate/advertise/Paypal links on practically every blog page out there?

Re:Open source??

[pcidevel]

I tell you what, I'll start a blog tommorrow you start a syndicated talk radio program that has a similar number of listeners as my blog. At the end of the year, lets compare expenses..

Re:Open source??

[Sweetshark]

Many open source developers get paid too.

Re:Open source??

[MAXOMENOS]

Sure, but unlike Rush, they're held accountable for what they produce.

Re:Open source??

[MAXOMENOS]

If Gannon/Guckert, a reporter from an independent online non-mainstream news site, cannot get a White House press pass then no blogger/open source journalist will get a pass.

Well, certainly not with a website that's only five days old.

Re:Open source??

[he-sk]

Yes, but SusanHU the actual blogger (or rather diarist) who broke that story is not.

Re:Open source??

[strelitsa]

Nonsense. Rush is "held accountable" for the product he produces. Its called the free market - if he produced crap, people wouldn't listen and he'd be off the air tomorrow.

Re:Open source??

[Matt_T_hat]

Call me stupid if you like... ...hell call me stupid anyway, you'll probably enjoy it but WTF that story made no sence to me and now I've read a few comment WTF^2

Re:Open source??

[bareshiyth]

Instead of needing one brilliant campaign advisor with all the best ideas in the world ...you can skim the Great Ideas from those people who otherwise have mediocre ideas the rest of the time ... much more than any one brilliant campaign advisor will ever be able to give you..."

Ok, but just what do you think makes for a "brilliant campaign advisor" but some one person with the abillity to "skim the Great Ideas" from out of the sea, populated by the "mediocre"... Genuises don't invent everything, but know how (1) to get the best out of less-able helpers, and (2) know the "great Idea" when they see it, and (3)_ do something with it besides "blog" about it, or toss it out in a puddle of mediocre stuff?

Everyone "advises" the candidate of their choice, but only the really bright one (Carl Rove?) actually gets to advise the candidate. Everyone thinks they know better, but only the winner can prove he really did! Everyone "Monday Morning Quartebacks" except for real quarterbacks!

I'd say a better example,

[Hawthorne01]

is the dismantling of CBS's attempt to flaunt the(obiviously) fake National Guard memos as evidence of Bush's slacking off in the Texas Air National Guard. Whether you agree if Dubya did such or not, the way the various conservative blogs built off each other in chasing down that fraud and exposing the sloppy journalism of CBS is a model for future "open-source journalism" efforts.

I, myself, watch the watchmen.

Re:I'd say a better example,

[CRepetski]

In the page to which this writeup is linked you can see they do indeed liken this incident to the situation of bloggers exposing CBS.

But that's a valid point anyway.

Re:I'd say a better example,

[Hawthorne01]

Are you suggesting is should RTFA?

My God, if every here did that, it would mean the end of /.!

:-)

Re:I'd say a better example,

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no she didn't. She claimed it was similar to statements she had heard at the time. But she was also a left-wing wacko with almost as much anti-Bush venom as Bill Burkett. The man's family, friends, and co-workers all disagree with her.

But you wouldn't want to slant things against your bias, now would you?

Re:I'd say a better example,

[OECD]

is the dismantling of CBS's attempt to flaunt the(obiviously) fake National Guard memos

No, although it's related. The Rathergate story exposed a weakness of journalists--they're mostly generalists. Whereas in any large group (Freepers, Rightwing Bloggers, etc.) you're going to have all kinds of experts in diverse fields (eg., TexANG memo format and terminology, MS Word.)

The Gannon story was fed by people (Kossacks, mostly) who were so interested in the story (originally, the Plame story, which Gannon covered) that they were willing to track down all kinds of loose ends. It's the other little secret of journalism--it's not hard, it's just time-consuming. This story was more about a distributed, self-organized approach to research--much like an FOSS project.

It's fascinating to watch the Media come to terms with these trends.

Re:I'd say a better example,

[Skuld-Chan]

By that logic we could dismantle foxnews overnight for the huge amount of misquoted, made up news etc that they deliberately post as news.

I give CBS credit - Dan at least thought those documents were real.

Its obvious there's far more going on here than "open source journalism"

Re:I'd say a better example,

[As Seen On TV]

I'm afraid you're only seeing part of the story. CBS blew it in a number of ways.

First, they blew it because Mary Mapes was following an agenda, not a story. Her goal was to influence the election, not to report the news.

Second, they blew it because nobody inside CBS was willing to shut Mapes down. There should have been an internal check-and-balance mechanism to prevent her from ever getting that story past the lead stage.

Third, once the story was demonstrated to be a big ol' lie, CBS should have immediately issued a retraction. They didn't. Instead, they stonewalled for something like two weeks, an eternity in this day and age.

Finally, CBS promised to conduct an impartial investigation and issue its findings in "weeks, not months." That didn't happen.

What the TANG story revealed was that CBS News had a whole series of systemic flaws that allowed the story to get to air, then prevented the organization from rectifying the situation. It revealed that CBS News, and, by extension, similar organizations, had fundamental problems that couldn't be fixed with a wave of the hand.

Re:I'd say a better example,

[Kenrod]

Right on, and don't forget to weigh how notable Eason Jordan, Ward Churchill, and Bill Moyers are (each has a public career spanning decades) as public figures who actually have a voice in public discourse (WhoTF is Gannon anyway, except someone who lobbed a softball at GWB?). Funny how Slashdot and the main-stream media take notice when it's the right-winger who is in the crosshairs, thus proving the liberal bias they've been charged with all along.

Re:I'd say a better example,

[ignu]

Amazingly enough, Mr. Gannon was one of the people to break this story, along with Valerie Plume.

The idea that anyone wishing to expose Bush's shoddy "service" during Vietnam would need to create fake documents (and would do so using Microsoft Word's default setting) is asinine. There's a mountain of material the press hasn't touched detailing what a poor guardsman Mr. Bush was, there's no need to create it.

However, Mr. Gannon was one of the first on this trail...

Re:I'd say a better example,

[OECD]

I'm afraid you're only seeing part of the story. CBS blew it in a number of ways.

They sure did, but that's beside the point. Your contention was that Rathergate was a better example of 'Open Source Journalism'. I'm saying that the model in the Plame/Gannon story is more like what you find in (the more popular) Open Source Projects. The participants found each other (through dailyKos), organized themselves, distributed the work (one guy did coporate records checks, e.g.) and generated a bunch of new information. Exactly what we would expect of investigative journalists--except they're not.

Rathergate was similar, but (with the inspired exception of Buckhead actually firing up MS Word) was more about experts in their fields offering critiques (e.g., of language in the documents.) Like I said, it's similar, but the Gannon story is more "FOSSy", if you will.

FWIW, I'm a rock-ribbed Republican, and my girlfriend's a Kossack.

Re:I'd say a better example,

[grcumb]

"First, they blew it because Mary Mapes was following an agenda, not a story."

Oh, for crying out loud. Can we please stop with this 'agenda' thing? The issue is not and has never been about agendas or bias. Why do we care for a second whether a person is a right- or left-winger? The only thing any of us should be caring about is THE TRUTH.

Were Mapes and Rather lazy when they researched the TANG story? Yes! They had lots of valid evidence but they allowed it to be tainted by an obviously forged document. This document completely discredited the rest of the work they did.

Is it unusual that a man with two weeks of training from a political 'think-tank', belonging to a news organisation that had only been publishing for a few weeks at the time, gets accredited to the White House under a false name? You bet is.

Does it seem even stranger that this neophyte is one of the first Washington journalists to find out who Valerie Plame is? Yep.

Can we say more than that? NO!. Nothing is proven yet. We have evidence of problems, and SusanG and company at DKos are looking into it because the mainstream media won't. That is at one and the same time a good and a bad thing. It's good because it's empowering to us that we can do it; it's bad because the mainstream media should have made a story of this two years ago.

We're only doing this investigation because the the media don't seem to care about the truth any more. This is a terrible thing, and we have the tools to fix it. I suggest, therefore that we stow allegations and innuendo, and allow the facts to speak for themselves.

Re:I'd say a better example,

[Anonymous Coward]

but then, don't forget we have a reason to be biased against you... "reality" we like to call it.

Re:I'd say a better example,

[As Seen On TV]

They had lots of valid evidence but they allowed it to be tainted by an obviously forged document.

Actually, the documents were the only evidence they had. Everything else was (1) anecdotal, and (2) completely discredited. They had nothing at all to go on except the documents, and the documents were faked.

But that's not really the point here. The point is that Mapes shouldn't even have been running down this story. Somebody above her in the CBS News org chart should have shut her down years ago. Because her only motivation in following the story was to politically damage George W. Bush. That's not what CBS News is supposed to be doing.

Is it unusual that a man with two weeks of training from a political 'think-tank', belonging to a news organisation that had only been publishing for a few weeks at the time, gets accredited to the White House under a false name? You bet is.

To get access to the White House briefing room, all you have to do is get a job with a news organization and then ask to get your name on the list. That's it. It's incredibly easy to get access to the briefing room. Understandably so. It's in the White House's interest to get its message out through as many channels as possible. Hell, the White House lets al-Jazeera into the briefing room. And you're worried about this guy?

We have evidence of problems, and SusanG and company at DKos are looking into it because the mainstream media won't.

Sigh. Let's at least be men enough to drop the pretense, okay? These people are digging around trying to find dirt with which to damage the Bush administration. That's their goal, that's their mission. They're not interested in news. If they were interested in news, they'd be on Eason Jordan and Ward Churchill like white on rice. They're interested only in stories that further their political agenda. And, quite obviously, they're not all that dissuaded by questions of veracity, either.

Don't try to paint this as a "David and Goliath" thing. Be honest about it.

Re:I'd say a better example,

[grcumb]

"Sigh. Let's at least be men enough to drop the pretense, okay? These people are digging around trying to find dirt with which to damage the Bush administration."

Funny, what you like to call 'dirt' others call FACT.

Re-read my post - I don't give a flying feather what someone's motivation is as long as they don't lie to me. Gannon/Guckert lied and misrepresented and might have committed a felony in the process. SusanG and company didn't. How do I know? I checked the research myself. You could too, if you really wanted to.

Re:I'd say a better example,

[As Seen On TV]

Gannon/Guckert lied and misrepresented and might have committed a felony in the process.

But none of that is true. He never lied, as far as anybody knows. Are you referring to his use of a pen name? Tons of reporters use pen names. He didn't misrepresent anything. And he certainly hasn't been accused of any crimes.

You're participating in a witch hunt orchestrated to silence a political opponent. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Re:I'd say a better example,

[As Seen On TV]

You're absolutely right. I should have been more clear about that in my comment. Everybody's got an agenda. The problem arises when people try to hide their agenda, or to pretend that they don't have one.

That's why I don't have any problem with Jeff Gannon. He was quite open about his support for the administration. The bloggers who attacked him, on the other hand, adopted high-minded language about bias and the free press when what they really meant was, "This guy supports stuff that we dislike, so we're looking for a reason to get him ejected from the game."

That's a great point. Thank you.

Re:I'd say a better example,

[ErikZ]

No lying eh?

So, stonewalling or censorship is cool with you?

Re:I'd say a better example,

[NutscrapeSucks]

> Because her only motivation in following the story was to politically damage George W. Bush.

This seems like a very dubious way of trying to damage Bush:

1) Nobody really debates that Bush was a rich irresponsible party boy, in fact this is a key point of attraction for for his "Born Again" supporters.

2) The only people who really care about whether or not Bush was AWOL are hard-core partisans on each side. There was very little swing interest in this story.

3) The TANG stories had been floating around for 8+ years and had never damaged Bush up to this point.

4) If they were going to invent documents to damange Bush, they could do a lot better. "Memo: Bush has damaged the Oval Office desk while cutting cocaine"

Take a step back and see that the reporters could care less about the partisan piss-match and were only reviving this story because of the new documents, and they reacted poorly because they'd really fucked up.

Re:I'd say a better example,

[SQL Error]

Were Mapes and Rather lazy when they researched the TANG story? Yes! They had lots of valid evidence but they allowed it to be tainted by an obviously forged document. This document completely discredited the rest of the work they did.

Lazy? LAZY?

A crack-addled monkey could have told them those things were fake. Indeed, their hired experts told them exactly that. They were ignored.

They had no other evidence; they had nothing at all. So they went with fraud, and got their hides nailed to the wall by the blogosphere.

And now the pitiable Kossacks, consumed with jealous rage after this and numerous other injuries, go on a witch-hunt for some reporter no-one has ever heard of who had the temerity to throw a softball question at a press conference.

And they want to make this pathetic act out as some sort of new wave of open source and collaboration.

I call bullshit. I call great heaping stinking piles of bullshit.

It sucks to be on the losing side of history, but the Kossacks made that choice themselves, and I can't find it in myself to care about their irreversible slide into the political dustbin.

Re:I'd say a better example,

[Guido von Guido]

None of the other members of the White House press corp attempts to conceal their identity as he did.

Gannon/Guckert is not a journalist. He has no experience and he doesn't work for a legimimate news outlet. He couldn't get permanent press credentials to the White House, which is why they had to issue him a daily pass.

His function at press conferences appears to have been to save the ass of Scott McLellan or the President by asking softball questions. It suggests coordination with the Whte House, as doees his role in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame (in which he apparently received a confidential CIA memo from someone in the White House).

Re:I'd say a better example,

[As Seen On TV]

None of the other members of the White House press corp attempts to conceal their identity as he did.

Mike Allen and Jim Engel both use pen names. There's another one, a female reporter whose pseudonym I can't remember unfortunately. And those are just the ones I can think off of the top of my head.

Gannon/Guckert is not a journalist.

So? I don't recall the clause in the first amendment limiting the freedom of the press to people with j-school degrees.

he doesn't work for a legimimate news outlet.

How do you define "legitimate?" More importantly, why do you define "legitimate," if it's not to exclude people you don't like?

His function at press conferences appears to have been to save the ass of Scott McLellan or the President by asking softball questions.

His "function," if you want to call it that, was to ask whatever questions he wanted to ask, just like every other reporter in the press room. The fact that he asked questions that you don't like doesn't mean he doesn't belong there. Hell, you'd be hard pressed to find anybody who doesn't think Helen Thomas spent her last few years in the briefing room as an openly partisan hack, but nobody called for her removal. Because we have a free press, you see.

Re:I'd say a better example,

[messiertom]

[i]Oh, for crying out loud. Can we please stop with this 'agenda' thing? The issue is not and has never been about agendas or bias. Why do we care for a second whether a person is a right- or left-winger? The only thing any of us should be caring about is THE TRUTH.[/i] Get out of my country, pro-truther.

Re:I'd say a better example,

[messiertom]

Oh, for crying out loud. Can we please stop with this 'agenda' thing? The issue is not and has never been about agendas or bias. Why do we care for a second whether a person is a right- or left-winger? The only thing any of us should be caring about is THE TRUTH.

Get out of my country, pro-truther.
*sigh*, preview button, I know

Re:I'd say a better example,

[grcumb]

"You're absolutely right. I should have been more clear about that in my comment. Everybody's got an agenda. The problem arises when people try to hide their agenda, or to pretend that they don't have one."

Thank you for this. The discussion improves immensely when we get to focus on facts, and trust other people to draw the appropriate conclusions, even if - surprise! - they don't agree with ours. I agree that right-wing bloggers have made as effective use of community research as the left. Arguably, it's been more effective than the left. I don't have to like this information - and for the record I don't - but I do have a responsibility to accept that the data seems to point to that.

"The bloggers who attacked him, on the other hand, adopted high-minded language about bias and the free press when what they really meant was, 'This guy supports stuff that we dislike, so we're looking for a reason to get him ejected from the game.'"

I will grant that a number of people were partisan and nasty in their characterisation of Gannon/Guckert. They've shown the same knee-jerk, unthinking prejudice that others have shown in different partisan causes. And to be clear, I don't like it any time someone stoops to this.

But your statement above misses an important distinction: While there were some who showed little sympathy and much malice, they were not the ones driving this investigation. If you trace the history of this investigation (especially the diaries of SusanG, who originated the project), you'll see that those who were involved in the actual research work were motivated because they saw what appeared to be a link between Gannon/Guckert and the 'outing' of Valerie Plame.

Blowing a CIA agent's cover is a felony offense, and bears investigating. The appearance of complicity between the White House and Gannon/Guckert make the target attractive for the lefties, no doubt, but if you check the diaries you'll see that they were not interested in speculation that did not arise from, or result in, verifiable proof. They were, in effect, trying to rise above the partisan brawl with something incontrovertible.

So far, they have achieved some, but not all, of this objective.

There are any number of partisan types who have seized upon different aspects of this affair and tried to use them for their own ends. Kos himself seems to think that it's fair game questioning the guy's sexual preference, something which the research team (and I) reject out of hand. Some have tried to use the photo of him posed in his underwear to ridicule him. I think that kind of thing appeals to the lowest instincts, and reject that, too.

BUT, having looked carefully at the evidence brought forward, I agree that it points to Gannon/Guckert being very near the heart of the Valerie Plame scandal, one which is easily as serious as Rather using forged documents. Partisanship notwithstanding, I think anyone who outs an undercover operative should be made to stand trial. What the people conducting this research are trying to establish is who exactly did that.

Re:I'd say a better example,

[As Seen On TV]

Arguably, it's been more effective than the left.

Given that conservatives were able to get to the bottom of stories inside CBS News, the University of Colorado and CNN without going dumpster-diving and smearing a man's name with allegations of gay prostitution, I'd say it's not even remotely arguable. Wouldn't you?

If you trace the history of this investigation (especially the diaries of SusanG, who originated the project), you'll see that those who were involved in the actual research work were motivated because they saw what appeared to be a link between Gannon/Guckert and the 'outing' of Valerie Plame.

That's simply untrue. They were motivated by politics and nothing else. This is obvious to anybody who isn't blinded by partisanship.

Blowing a CIA agent's cover is a felony offense, and bears investigating.

Then where's the Robert Novak witch-hunt? It was Novak who blew her cover. His column ran two days before Gannon published his first article.

They were, in effect, trying to rise above the partisan brawl with something incontrovertible.

I don't know which is more troubling. The idea that you would say such an obviously untrue thing, or the idea that you might believe it.

Kos himself seems to think that it's fair game questioning the guy's sexual preference, something which the research team (and I) reject out of hand.

Then why did they go dumpster-diving? You're just not speaking the truth here.

But what I find truly fascinating about all this is that everybody on the left is eager to humiliate Gannon out of his job, but that nobody on the left is interested in investigating Joe Wilson's perfidy. You know, the real story here? You may have heard of it? The one where a special envoy lied about his findings in Niger?

This is just a partisan conspiracy theory designed to undermine the administration's second term legislative agenda, a la Whitewater. It's bullshit. It's nonsense. And by continuing to defend it in the strongest terms, you're just making an ass of yourself.

No, I do not think so

[Anonymous Coward]

Open source is a method of collaboration. People come together and use the methods and tools of open source development to allow their disparate skills and goals to reach a common productive endpoint.

Blogging is a zillion people who disagree with each other on everything all yelling at the same time and hoping that they'll attract a big enough crowd to sustain themselves, and other people come in and selectively listen to just the yelling people that make them feel good about themselves.

Open Source and Blogging both approach the same point, the same goal: diversity, whether diversity of software usage or diversity of viewpoints. But they approach it from the opposite direction.

I also question whether Blogging is perhaps being a little presumptuous in comparing itself to the open source movement. The open source movement has left behind a series of useful and generally usable software programs which are continually improving, but which would still have some real utility if all new development ceased tomorrow. Blogging's legacy is pretty much just a series of articles on the subject of how important blogging is.

Re:No, I do not think so

[de1orean]

if you'd look at the DailyKos diaries, you'd see the unprecedented level of collabo among all the folks who dig the logwork... it's damned impressive. link

Re:No, I do not think so

[MythMoth]

Did you mean to post that A/C ? 'cos it's the most intelligent thing I've read on the subject of blogs pretty much ever.

Re:No, I do not think so

[0m3gaMan]

Very well said.

The blogging world is being touted (by other bloggers) as the Next Big Thing(tm). It is not.

How is blogging, when distilled to it's core elements, different than, say, Usenet, circa 1993?

It isn't--it's just in a different form.

The self-congratulatory talk of 'open source' blogging, blah blah blah is premature: If I 'm going to read news or commentary, I want it to be proofread, copy-edited, and I want an intelligent editor to be the gatekeeper holding the various trolls, tinfoil hats, and demagogues, at bay. At their very best, blogs do a mediocre job of this.

Re:No, I do not think so

[The-Bus]

"Blogging's legacy is pretty much just a series of articles on the subject of how important blogging is."

One of the reasons I stopped even wandering towards DailyKOS daily is that it was getting to be very irritating to listen to all these people talk about how important they are, or how important blogging is. And then they talk about it like it is a year old.

Blogging is, at the base level, still posting news on a webpage. With links. Why wasn't blogging around in a big way in 1996? Is it because a lot of people didn't have internet access? Because now "having a web page" is now known as "blogging" when "blogging" is not any different, mechanically, from what has existed before.

I mean, if the internet didn't exist, and then suddenly it appeared, and suddenly blogging appeared too, then yes -- but what makes blogging so special? I ran a news site for the (original, shoddy) Unreal multiplayer "scene" (and I use that in quotes because it was probably under 5,000 people worldwide that cared).

Blogging, in essence, is a LOT of people sharing their opinions. Except there's no way for any person to "take in" more opinions now than 5 years ago. If anything, now with blogging, you have to deal with a lot of crap. Think of doing science research by looking at Slashdot comments in the Science section as opposed to reading journals. Both have strengths and weaknesses, but without the regular media, blogging doesn't exist. It's just a sub-group. In politics, they've "given" back twice -- the Rather story, and now this. Yet, day to day, they exist and rely based on information that the media gives them.

They're sort of like the little fish that clean up whales and larger fish. It's a symbiotic relationship, but the little fish is still just sucking up all the crap from the big fish. It's not a partnership.

Re:No, I do not think so

[As Seen On TV]

I guess it's impressive ... if you discount the fact that that kind of collaboration goes on among bloggers every day. It happened on Eason Jordan, it happened on Ward Churchill, it happened on Rathergate, and it's happened before that. And it will go on happening, because it's a natural process.

Calling it "open source" anything is just stupid though. That's just co-opting a buzz word that some people believe carries some degree of cache. It doesn't really mean anything, it doesn't really describe anything.

Re:No, I do not think so

[fieldmethods]

Totally missing the point. Yes, there are arrogant bloggers who puff themselves up to the rotundity of the Goodyear blimp.

So what?

Blogging is about *scale*. And no, USENET is not a valid analogy. There are more bloggers now than there were ever people on USENET. Format does matter -- the point is that people who don't know HTML from a salad fork can now express their opinions on whatever they want, whenever they want.

Daily Kos is certainly full of himself. But he's right about this: "dozens (hundreds) of people waging open source journalism can sometimes be more effective than understaffed newsrooms filled with overworked reporters trying to meet deadline."

Bloggers are fact checkers on the media, and it only works because it's easy enough for many, many people to participate.

As for the idea that open source is all about collaboration whereas blogging is all about flame wars, well... read LKML some time. 8^)

Correction:

[NoseBag]

Actually, according to the WH:

"White House press secretary Scott McClellan said (James D.) Guckert (his real name)did not have a regular White House press pass but was cleared on a day-by-day basis to attend briefings and used his real name."
(parenthetic comments mine)

Re:Correction:

[Overt Coward]

Yeah, but Gannon is a conservative, so facts won't actually matter to the crowd here at Slashdot.

"Questions"

[ortcutt]

It might be charitable to even call Gannon/Guckert's comments "questions". Here are some highlights--or should I say lowlights--from his distinguished career.

May 10, 2004: "Q In your denunciations of the Abu Ghraib photos, you've used words like 'sickening,' 'disgusting' and 'reprehensible.' Will you have any adjectives left to adequately describe the pictures from Saddam's rape rooms and torture chambers? And will Americans ever see those images?"

MR. McCLELLAN: "I'm glad you brought that up, Jeff, because the President talks about that often."

July 15, 2004: "Q Last Friday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report that shows that Ambassador Joe Wilson lied when he said his wife didn't put him up for the mission to Niger. The British inquiry into their own prewar intelligence yesterday concluded that the President's 16 words were 'well-founded.' Doesn't Joe Wilson owe the President and America an apology for his deception and his own intelligence failure?"

April 1, 2004: "Q I'd like to comment on the angry mob that surrounded Karl Rove's house on Sunday. They chanted and pounded on the windows until the D.C. police and Secret Service were called in. The protest was organized by the National People's Action Coalition, whose members receive taxpayer funds, as well as financial support from groups including Theresa Heinz Kerry's Tides Foundation.

MR. McCLELLAN: "I would just say that, one, we appreciate and understand concerns that people may have. I would certainly hope that people would respect the families of White House staff."

Feb. 10, 2004: "Q Since there have been so many questions about what the President was doing over 30 years ago, what is it that he did after his honorable discharge from the National Guard? Did he make speeches alongside Jane Fonda, denouncing America's racist war in Vietnam? Did he testify before Congress that American troops committed war crimes in Vietnam? And did he throw somebody else's medals at the White House to protest a war America was still fighting?"

Re:"Questions"

[Jacked]

With the exception of the last question, it sounds to me like he brought up some good points.

In that last question he seems to be taking none to subtle shots a Kerry, rather asking a legitimate question.

I don't subscribe to the school of thought that the sole job a reporter is to dig up dirt. If it happens, that's fine, but, to me, it seems like their role should be to gather accurate information and report on it.

Re:"Questions"

[ortcutt]

The reporters in White House Briefings aren't supposed to be making points. They are supposed to be eliciting information from the White House. If Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert wants to make points, he should call a press conference of his own. Nothing in these "questions" is meant to elicit information from the White House. They are designed to make comments on TV and nothing else.

Re:"Questions"

[Jacked]

True enough, I'll grant you that.

Hopefully we would agree that any reporter should avoid using their opportunity to ask a question as a platform for their own agenda, regardless of their own political leanings.

I know, that's being a little idealistic, perhaps a bit naive, but, my world's a better place.

Re:"Questions"

[shanen]

Well, you got me to think of a different angle of it...

Do you think the press conferences are supposed to be about communicating the truth effectively, or are they supposed to be adversarial situations in which the reporters have to fish for the truth that has not been revealed?

Of course, the White House claims they are just communicating the truth, and it's just one of those funny coincidences that "Jeff Gannon" was so helpful in getting the official BushCo truth® out to the public. Makes you wonder why they need an evasive slime artist like McClellan for the job of handling them? Another funny coincidence?

However, I don't think I'm the only person who regards the press conferences as image management and propaganda, and this fake reporter is exactly the kind of tool you use for such purposes. Quite similar to paying off the various rightwing pundits for their support. (Though the outcry has been about direct payments, I think the indirect payments are much worse--for example, giving them well-paid contracts with FAUX news.)

One thing that really bothers me is that White House security has become so slack that people can wander around there with fake names, as long as they are the proper kind of supportive fanatics. Was this bogus scammer ever in the presence of his majesty Dubya? At least one of the cited questions seems to say he was on at least one occasion. The security issue is that such fanatics are basically crazy, and one of them might decide that Dubya has betrayed the cause and has to be killed. (Sure would be politically awkward if Cheney couldn't keep hiding in the shadows.)

Re:"Questions"

[ortcutt]

Both, I would say. Sometimes getting information out of the administration requires fishing or at least cutting through the spin. That happens in every administration. Asking "questions" which don't even intend to elicit any information from the administration has no place in a Briefing though.

Re:"Questions"

[SideshowBob]

You're an Anonymous Coward so I shouldn't even bother, but here goes:

- they all used their real names
- they all passed a background check
- they all had actual educations in journalism
- none of them worked for GOPUSA or any other official arm of a political party
- they all worked for well known news organizations, not some website that was online for all of 96 hours before getting a white house press pass
- none of them were plants by the administration (you know the people that pay off journalists for positive press)
- (this one is just for the ironic humor) none of them ran gay porn sites on the side, while writing gay-bashing screeds for their 'news' items

The fact that the neocons will defend this bull crap just shows that they are a bunch of unprincipled dillweeds that will say or do anything to keep power.

Re:"Questions"

[Jacked]

One thing that really bothers me is that White House security has become so slack that people can wander around there with fake names

It might not be as bad as it sounds. I think I read something earlier that his press pass was given on a day-by-day basis, and was obtained using his real name. Only when it came time to publish did he use his pseudonym.

Re:"Questions"

[shikan_taza]

"Q Since there have been so many questions about what the President was doing over 30 years ago, what is it that he did after his honorable discharge from the National Guard? Did he make speeches alongside Jane Fonda, denouncing America's racist war in Vietnam? Did he testify before Congress that American troops committed war crimes in Vietnam? And did he throw somebody else's medals at the White House to protest a war America was still fighting?"

Something is seriously wrong with the American mainstream media if he was allowed to ask this question without raising at least a murmur from the other journalists present.

susang of daily kos basically broke the story.

[de1orean]

well, susang and lots of other folks, but she drove the whole thing. that's the cnxn.

Re:Open Source? Does that mean OPEN?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because there is a very small chance that you are not trolling, and instead are simply stupid, here is a link to the "Carly Fiona Fired" article.

Whether you are trolling or stupid, however, it is my sincere hope you are voted to -1 in short order.

Open Source Journalism?

[null etc.]

Open source politics, open source activism, open source journalism -- the aggregation of thousands on behalf of a common cause.

There's a few thousand people aggregated on behalf of a common cause at Microsoft's campus - I'd hesitate to call that Open Source.

Open Source isn't a particularly good word to describe journalism.

For true press freedom...

[caluml]

we need some kind of underground network, where everyone is unknown, untraceable and unaccountable.
I wonder if it exists.

Re:For true press freedom...

[As Seen On TV]

No, we don't need any such thing. In fact, we need just the opposite of such a thing. Because transparent journalism only works in a high-trust environment. If every author is anonymous, you've reduced the news to a giant rumor mill filled with unprovable and irrefutable lies.

Re:For true press freedom...

[protocol420]

Utter crap. There is no way the system you describe can be anonymous. There are no technical docs on the site, and the instructions are vauge and unprofessional. It seems to be a run-of-the-mill VPN with some tricky configs and off the shelf software. Maybe you can sell it at Frys or Best Buy or wherever the ignorant windows users will think it sounds nice.

Worth noting...

[Ars-Fartsica]

...that last year's "big story" (Dan Rather falsification of Bush military records controversy), was broken by bloggers.

Big Media (NYTimes, etc) long term are in no better shape than record or film companies. They claim to be the arbiters of intellectual property but in reality we see that once you eliminate manufacturing and distribution costs, they are no better or no different than a guy in his basement. These firms were not in fact media firms but manufacturers and distributors.

Re:Worth noting...

[JMPrice]

I wonder about this. the NYTimes does spend about $330 million dollars a year on original reporting.

Could all of this work be done by bloggers? Would we only need RSS aggregators that would pull "newspapers" together from different threads?

I don't know. I'm inclined to think both models will coexist next to each other.

Re:Worth noting...

[muertos]

I don't know if the long term point is very true. Any large media organization is going to have its faults, but in the case of print journalism, it's not overpriced, it's not maliciously inclined towards its alternative competitors, and it's for the most part factual with very little personal bias applied. There've been a few rather obvious misses to that, but they want to improve. TV journalism has to play the ratings game, the same as any other TV show, but then again, it's fairly priced, and not malicious in intent, except again for a couple of rather obvious cases. Compare that to record and film, and I think that traditional journalism will remain in good standing for a very long time. And, of course, it may be that one day not too far from now, blogging will be considered traditional journalism just the same.

Re:Worth noting...

[legirons]

"Worth noting that last year's "big story" (Dan Rather falsification of Bush military records controversy), was broken by bloggers."

We still don't believe that it was deliberately used to bait CBS, knowing how easy it would be to prove forged?

I can think of big stories from last year, but that wasn't one of them. It was just one big attempt to distract people from asking important questions about the election.

Is this really open source?

[mrighi]

It's interesting how the definition of "open source" has changed over the last few years. It used to be that I only ever heard "open source" associated with software. After all, software is built from source code.

It seems like the phrase "open source" is being confused with the similar, but different, "free to use", "free speech" or "freedom of expression." We hear about open source journalism, open source biology, open source research and even open source beer.

I'm not saying that this is a bad thing... I'm just making an observation. It makes me wonder if in twenty years from now, when new countries are writing their constitutions, will they guarantee their citizens "open source rights?"

Re:Is this really open source?

[BorgCopyeditor]

I had the same questions when I saw the headline. Then I read about the fact that the "story" itself was cobbled together by a spontaneously labor-dividing group of volunteers. So, now I think it does make sense to call it "open source," by analogy, even if there is no source code.

Re:Open Source? Does that mean OPEN?

[ortcutt]

Haven't you noticed the five-day lag between when news happens and when it appears on Slashdot?

Blogging != OpenSource.

[jericho4.0]

WTF? Opensource is a licenceing method, not a way for people to work together. It encourages people and companies to contribute to work others started because they know it will not be used for the benefit of one, but the benefit of all.

I fail to see the similarity to bloggers, who seem (at least the majority)to be more concerned about getting people to pay attention to them.

Re:Blogging != OpenSource.

[corblix]

Opensource is a licenceing method, not a way for people to work together.

People do talk about the "open source development model" (Google that string if you don't believe me). Plenty of open source software is not developed in accordance with that model, so strictly speaking, "open source development" is a misnomer. However, the terminology is still used that way.

What does it mean in that context? An important feature is that anyone can contribute, although there may be some overall organization (reviews, moderation, whatever).

Now apply these ideas to news and the spread of information more generally. Compare your favorite open source development project with MS Word. Now compare your favorite blog, with all its feedback, to ABC News. The relationships are similar.

I think it's clear that blogging is not quite there yet. Plenty of open-source projects have no single clear leader. Just about every blog does. But we're getting there.

Re:Blogging != OpenSource.

[MAXOMENOS]

I sympathize with you, and I"ve commented on DailyKos that Open Source Journalism should at least be licensed under the Creative Commons Atribute/NoDeriv license (or something similar). So far it seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

Re:Blogging != OpenSource.

[babelex]

If you opened your eyes and actually looked into to it you would see the features that lead to the association of blogging and open source. Think about group effects, trackback URL's, Everyone can contribute not to mention both free speach and free beer.

Open Source Journalism

[BossMC]

I would like to welcome Open Source Journalism. I can't stand it when I open a newspaper and the damn thing is in some proprietary format!

Re:Open Source? Does that mean OPEN?

[RobotRunAmok]

It ran 2/9, Genius. 800+ comments as I recall.

Do a search on 'Fiorina' at the bottom of the page.

(BTW, if this site is moving too fast for you, maybe you should consider an older, slower medium, like newspapers.)

Re:motivated people always get better results

[Scoria]

Those people with sufficient expertise and funding are certainly motivated, too. There's only one problem: They're motivated to satisfy their agenda-oriented superiors. The objective truth, it seems, no longer pays their respective mortgages.

Re:Open Source? Does that mean OPEN?

[Doc Ruby]

Because you don't even read the Slashdot article "HP CEO Carly Fiorina to Step Down" from 2 days ago before posting? Now you are free to go flame ignorantly in the proper thread.

"Open Source"

[The Journalist]

Gee, that would explain why my competitors have the same quotes I do from anonymous sources.

And why said sources are often found drifting in the river the next day...

The man is talking bollocks.

[Slash Watch]

Half of the comments above mine will all agree; Markos is talking crap. What in hell does the "open source philosophy" have to do with weblogging? The weblogging community is just a big echo chamber of technological circlejerking over RSS, Trackbacking and other such tosh. Open source is all about, you know, making something useful and sharing it with others. Someone needs to tell Markos the difference before he spouts more misinformation.

this is NOT open source...

[Vellmont]

Call it co-operative journalism, open jouralism, whatever, but open source isn't just another word for mass co-operation between loosely associated people. No one is licensing "source code" in a open source like license in a blog. Maybe this sounds like nitpicking, but I find tying the two concepts together via the term "open source" to be confusing to both concepts.

There is no source code to journalism (beyond raw data), and I don't see people licensing their words on blogs under an open source license.

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Scoria]

Be optimistic, Doc Ruby. Once the e-PATRIOT ACT becomes effective, at least you'll be able to discern the actual identities of these right-wing Anonymous Cowards. ;-)

Open Source? Stupid buzz word people

[Raypeso]

How do you open source journalism? Is there source code? Do you complie your reporter when there is a new upgrade? If you want to use some buzz words, how about grass roots? Seems to apply better than a far reaching attempt to "tech" everything.

Re:Open Source? Stupid buzz word people

[jfern]

Well, you could use CVS, if you so wanted.

McClellan Irregulars

[Doc Ruby]

So every day they had a chance to keep this clown out, but ushered him in, instead? Though McClellan has admitted he knew Gannon wasn't even his real name, so therefore no real background check had been performed? That sounds a lot like McClellan knew Gannon/Guckert was "OK" anyway - unless he was playing fast and loose with personal security of the president and the rest of the White House, including access to restricted CIA info. And his own personal security. This guy was a plant - let's see how long it takes to connect him to the journalist rental budget that various other two-bit writers have been exposed on in the past couple of weeks.

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[NoseBag]

Since his real name was used, I would imagine that it was *that* name that was vett'ed.

Previous response falsifies this assertion. There is no assertion anywhere that McClellan himself was even personally aware of the guy.

As opposed to the uber-liberal MSM "plants" that attend every day? Lighten up and take your meds.

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[As Seen On TV]

We have this wacky idea called "freedom of the press." It means that even people you disagree with are allowed to report and to comment on the news of the day.

You can keep looking for evidence of a high-level conspiracy all you want. It's still not gonna be true. The bottom line is that there are a lot of people who hold opinions that are different from yours. These people are sincere. They're not "plants." And they have just as much right to report the news as anybody else.

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[Doc Ruby]

' McClellan did confirm he knew previously that "Jeff Gannon" was not the reporter's real name.'

You won't get anywhere with that imaginary "uber-liberal" BS. Whatever you're having, I'll have a double.

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[ortcutt]

So if there were White House Briefings and Scott McClennan only called on people who he knew would ask leading, friendly question, do you think that would be a free press?

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[Doc Ruby]

We have this familiarity with "strawman arguments". It's when someone picks the argument they want their opponent to have, instead of the one they're actually facing, and argue with the "strawman". I haven't said that anyone should be disallowed to report or comment (even those with nothing but meaningless or stupid reports and commentaries, though I wish they'd shut up of their own accord). I do say that Gannon/whatever was a plant. Because he was let into WH press briefings, a necessarily selective group, in a unique scenario that has been detailed elsewhere. After being denied a Capitol Hill pass. Without a background check that could have dug up a lot more than this "gay" smokescreen, if he were dangerous - but that wasn't even performed. While the WH is revealed to be paying other journalists for similar astroturfing. They still have the right to report the "news". But they don't have a right to pretend they're not plants, shills for a complicit White House. Like I say, let's see how far this one goes.

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[As Seen On TV]

If that happened, that would be a problem. But since during the daily briefing everybody in the press room gets to ask two questions --the briefer, usually Scott, goes in seating order -- I'd have to say that it's kind of a non issue. Don't you think?

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[ugmoe]

So you're claiming that when Mr. T visited the White House that no background check was performed because Mr. T isn't his real name? "Though McClellan has admitted he knew Gannon wasn't even his real name, so therefore no real background check had been performed? "

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[Doc Ruby]

Whose statement? He scammed in, repeatedly, under McClellan's wing. No one has answered specifically which of his names was on the pass. How hard is it for you to be unhappy at this security breach, to say nothing of the layers of scamming and deception?

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[Doc Ruby]

So you're claiming that the risk of Mr T, a well-known Hollywood star, with a well-documented past, was the same as this "Gannon" creep? And that security 20 years ago was as tight as now, with at least 2 wars on, and the highest presidential hatred index since Nixon? And how do you know that they didn't run the background check on Mr T?

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[DavidTC]

So the fact that they're delibrately loading in people who ask questions they want, instead of giving that space to people who actually ask important issues, is completely meaningless to you?

It's bad enough journalists feel they can't ask probing questions of they won't be allowed back in. Now they're delibrately keeping journalists out by allowing pretend journalists to sit in the seats and waste everyone's time.

In the whole scope of things, this is a very small 'crime', in fact, it's not really that bad at all. Hell, they could accomplish this by having the briefer read a statement beforehand and removing a seat from the room. The problem isn't 'having one less journalist and spouting propaganda'. The latter is expected during a briefing, at least before the questions, and the former, for all I know, changes monthly.

The point is they've made a mockery of the entire press briefing by their apparent belief they can do any damn thing they want.

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[As Seen On TV]

So the fact that they're delibrately loading in people who ask questions they want, instead of giving that space to people who actually ask important issues, is completely meaningless to you?

If you really think the communications office was stacking the deck, ask yourself why Helen Thomas wasn't given the boot years ago.

It's bad enough journalists feel they can't ask probing questions of they won't be allowed back in.

Sigh. Have you ever even seen a White House press briefing? They're brutal. It's like feeding time at the shark tank. This "they're scared to ask tough questions" thing is just complete crap.

Now they're delibrately keeping journalists out

Who was excluded? Where's your evidence that anybody was excluded? See Thomas-comma-Helen.

The point is they've made a mockery of the entire press briefing by their apparent belief they can do any damn thing they want.

Um. They can do any damn thing they want. It's their room. If they wanted to shut down the press office entirely, they could do that. If they wanted to throw it open to any blogger with a laptop, they could do that. It's their room.

Freedom sucks, huh?

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[As Seen On TV]

Do you think Slashdotters should not be allowed to criticize the government or Gannon?

I believe that the solution to bad speech is more speech, not less. If liberal bloggers didn't like what Gannon was saying, why didn't they fight it with speech of their own? Why did they find it necessary to dig up personally humiliating connections between Gannon's parent company's parent company and some filthy Internet domain names? The answer, of course, as made crystal clear by Markos Zuniga to Howard Kurtz, is that that's what it took to drum up the public's interest in the story. They used the sex angle deliberately to make it impossible for Gannon to continue to do his job.

I believe that the way to deal with somebody you disagree with is to share your own opinion and let the public decide, not to silence the other guy.

But hey, I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the "freedom of speech for me, but not for thee" attitude. Lord knows it's prevalent enough.

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[smitth1276]

It's not BS. The average White House correspondent is pretty damned liberal. That is self-evident.

Unless you are using some leftist-political spectrum where Marxism is considered centrist.

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[Doc Ruby]

Evident to you, a rightwinger, for whom a group of people who won't even ask "how do you expect to continue the rule of law with an inquisitor running the Justice Department?" are "liberal". Or ask "doesn't Ms. Rice's repeated lies about Iraqi WMD make her less effective in negotiating with foreign countries to support our foreign policy?". Or "how can we believe a word you say about money when the prescription drug program now costs at least $750B, not the $500B you admitted when it passed, or the $400B you lied about to get it to pass your own party in Congress?". Or any of the other obvious questions that millions of Americans have, which would embarass the president, left looking like he did in the first debate last year, without an answer?

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[Doc Ruby]

Helen Thomas couldn't be just kicked out, because she was too well-respected by so many readers and journalists. When she finally was kicked out, her civilized criticism, unrestrained by the need for access to the WH press office, was damaging to their credibility. Keeping her around to lie to increases their credibility. Standard American propaganda model, well documented.

Now how about our "it's their room" comment? It's OUR room! Those people work for us - the journalists, though conflicted by their corporate contracts, and the White House staff and politicians, though distracted from their Constitutional jobs by their immense power and unaccountablitity. Not to mention their corporate fealty. *Your* version of freedom sucks. Because it's just some kind of rightwing naif version of freedom, where only the powerful are free, and the rest of us have to struggle to keep up with the crumbs they throw us.

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[Doc Ruby]

There really is just one total rightwing nutcase, posting as Anonymous Coward, right? Because you're all like cartoon clones.

First, I'm referring to Inquisitor Gonzales. Your denial of his torture mastermindery is so complete that you can't even make the connections. Ashcroft was bad enough, partly because he was so dumb. But Gonzales is more of a threat, because he seems pretty smart. You're so clueless that you think I'm "Left", when all that defines my post is screaming about TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS in government spending, delivered by lying to the people. The "Right" used to be defined by less spending, and more direct reporting to the people. But rightwing nutcases like you have taken every opportunity, since you've gotten any power, to make such distinctions as "Right" and "Left" irrelevant. You're a corporate flack, lying to keep yourself planted on the side that's "winning", though it's robbing you blind and destroying your country - it's already destroyed your "movement", it's ideology, and replaced it with a team accountable to no one. Every politician tries to get that, but people like you are to blame for giving it to them.

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[DavidTC]

Oh no! He can't do his job of pretending to be a journalist so that the briefing room looks better deposed towards Bush! Well, damn.

And you aren't paying attention to the real story or the gay story.

The real story: A non-journalist was paid, yes, paid, to stand bald-face in the press room and act like a member of the press by the very people he was questioning. Yes, it is their press room, and legally they could turn it into a swedish spa, but that's not the point. The point is, once again, the administation was lying to us to make themselves look better. And, once again, they appear not to have broken any laws.

The gay story: He was running gay domains, and he releases reworded GOP press releases and has indulged in gay baiting repeated on, apparently, his own. As he is basically a right wing troll, this is not surprising. His attempt to blame it on 'parent companies' or 'before he was born again' is not at all plausible. He himself appears shirtless on some of these domains. This, by itself, would be enough to make the rounds on the blogs, as yet another example of right-wing hypocritisy (re: Rush Limbaugh's drug addiction), although it would not make the news, except this guy, thanks to the real story, is now as well known as Rush.

Anyone trying to pretend the important story is the gay story is almost certainly a) a 12 year old, or b) someone trying to divert attention away from the fact the administation, yet again, is lying to people, by representing a paid shill as an actual journalist. The only reason the gay story is important because it shows this guy wasn't just a shill, he was a shill who probably didn't believe in the thing he was shilling.

As for whether or not he's gay...I promise never to say anything about it, until he write something defending comparisions of homosexuality to beastality. Again.

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[As Seen On TV]

Your comment is filled with misinformation. I'm happy to give you the benefit of the doubt and conclude that you're just parroting what you've heard from others. Let me take this opportunity to correct you on some pretty important matters of fact.

A non-journalist was paid, yes, paid, to stand bald-face in the press room

That allegation is not supported by the facts. Accusations that Gannon was, in the parlance of the day, "a plant" are complete speculation at this point, unsupported by any evidence at all.

And calling him a "non-journalist" is disingenuous. He was employed by a news service. That makes him a journalist. You can argue that he wasn't a trained journalist or that he wasn't a good journalist, but you can't dispute that he was, in fact, a journalist.

once again, the administation was lying to us

Complete fantasy.

He was running gay domains

Three filthy domain names were registered in the name of Talon's parent company. These names were never actually associated with any Web content. They were just registered names. Which doesn't excuse the fact that they were filthy, but it means that you're not telling the truth when you say that he was running them. It wasn't him, and they weren't being run at all.

he releases reworded GOP press releases

If that were a crime, half of the journalists in this country would have to plead guilty. The issue here isn't that he wrote stories based on press releases. The issue is that he wrote stories based on press releases from people you don't like.

and has indulged in gay baiting

That's a false accusation.

He himself appears shirtless on some of these domains.

There is a picture of him that was associated with an AOL profile. It shows a bald guy with his shirt off. The picture certainly isn't flattering, but it's not sexual either. And it was never associated with any of the domain names his parent company's parent company owned, because none of those names were ever associated with any content at all.

This, by itself, would be enough to make the rounds on the blogs, as yet another example of right-wing hypocritisy

The fact that a reporter used an unflattering picture of himself in his AOL profile is "hypocritisy?" Have you seen Molly Ivins?

Anyone trying to pretend the important story is the gay story is almost certainly a) a 12 year old, or b) someone trying to divert attention

I'm confused. Why did you dedicate over 100 words to what you call "the gay story," saying yourself, "This, by itself, would be enough to make the rounds," if it's not important to you? I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I think you're sending a mixed message here.

the administation, yet again, is lying to people

The fact that you have twice accused the administration of lying reveals your partisanship. The only people who use that kind of language are the blind Bush haters. Why won't you at least be honest and admit that you're interested in this story because you hope it will make the White House look bad? Jeff Gannon was honest enough to openly admit that he was supportive of the administration. Why can't you be honest enough to admit that you're an opponent of the administration?

by representing a paid shill as an actual journalist

Again: Accusations of his being "a paid shill" are just plain false. If you want to make accusations like that, you're going to have to do more than some sleazy dumpster diving. You're going to have to do some actual investigative reporting to uncover some kind of connection. At this time, no such connection exists, so you're just blowing hot air.

The only reason the gay story is important because it shows this guy wasn't just a shill, he was a shill who probably didn't believe in the thing he was shilling.

Do a LexisNexis search. He never actuall

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[DavidTC]

Well, first let's address the out of context quote.

I'm confused. Why did you dedicate over 100 words to what you call "the gay story," saying yourself, "This, by itself, would be enough to make the rounds," if it's not important to you? I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I think you're sending a mixed message here.

Because I didn't. I said that it would be 'enough to make the rounds on the blogs, as yet another example of right-wing hypocritisy'. And then I said it would not make the news. You rather obviously aren't the sharpest knife in the drawer. All sorts of crap makes the rounds on the blogs. Hence my reference to '12 year olds' later on. In case it was not explicit enough, I think everyone obsessing over that is being a bit silly, but the left rather enjoys the right being hypocrits.

But, since you've allegded it's not true, I have to tell you you are wrong...the business, Bedrock Corp of Wilmington, that owns the domains was located at his home address. Or, at least, that's the only address besides a Mailboxes Etc. It's his business. Now, I'm not saying those are his sites, but if they aren't, they're his client's sites. Or people are just randomly registering domains at his house, which is not completely discountable, except they were registered way before anyone know who 'Gannon' was. You're right that 'running' is an exaggeration...they are currently empty.

As for him being employed by a news service...he is not. He is employed by the 'Eberle Communications Group' (through the shell domain of TalonNews, which is merely a place for the GOPUSA to get stories) which is a PR/direct marketing firm.

To repeat that differently, and because it's to important as to why Gannon is not a journalist, a marketing firm is operating an 'advocacy group' to collect news stories and distribute them to interested parties, and this advocacy group is, itself, operating a 'news service' so that said advocacy group has stories to hand out. It's an incredibly obvious scam, because they're all owned by Bobby and Bruce Eberle.

Gannon is working for a PR firm employed by Republicans. It's not some fucking under-the-table deal that needs to be proven. Talon News exists to provide stories to the GOPUSA newswire, so that stories can be printed that show the PR firm's (which is owned by the owner of GOPUSA's brother) clients, and the Republican party in general, in a good light.

If that's not enough, GOPUSA, the 'new service', was created with the stated purpose of getting conservative Republicans in office in Texas.

He's paid to write conservative 'news stories' that are basically whatever the Eberle brothers want. He's a paid shill.

As for 'gay baiting' and whatnot, I really don't have time to look up and read all his gibberish. If you want to say he doesn't, I won't argue, because when I was reading about this I didn't bother to follow any of the link proporting to show that.

But he did defend Santorum's rather offensive comment that you copied. Which, BTW, is 'true' only for extremely limited values of 'every society'. You'd have to exclude some American societies for that to work. (e.g, Boston marriage)

And, in general, it is only true because the relationship we would refer to as marriage is, in that statement, being refered to as marriage in those societies, which is circular logic if I've ever heard it.He's defining marriage as a (presumably sexual) 'relationship not between homosexuals', and pointing out that every society has a concept meaning that kind of relationship. Um, duh. People like to come up with words meaning things. Makes it easier to talk.

(However, he's still wrong here, because quite a few societies have never distinguished between a relationship with a man and a woman and two women, but I'm sure he's just defining those societies as having no concept of marriage at all. Either that or he's very ignorant.)

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[As Seen On TV]

I think everyone obsessing over that is being a bit silly, but the left rather enjoys the right being hypocrits.

Confused again. It was leftists who dug up and promoted the links to smut. How is it that the right is guilty of "hypocritisy?" Especially considering this story has not made the rounds on right-wing blogs, except in the form of commentary observing that while right-wingers take down Eason Jordan purely by reporting his story and doing top-shelf journalism (see Malkin, Michelle), left-wingers felt it necessary to go dumpster-diving to find trash to throw at Jeff Gannon. Is that the "hypocritisy" you were referring to?

the business, Bedrock Corp of Wilmington, that owns the domains was located at his home address.

You've been the victim of some misinformation, no doubt spread by a leftist who thought the smut angle was a big deal. And here you are spreading that misinformation, demonstrating that you think the smut angle is a big deal. And yet you claim that you think it isn't. Which is it?

through the shell domain of TalonNews, which is merely a place for the GOPUSA to get stories

Talon News is obviously a news service. The fact that you don't like it doesn't mean you get to declare that it's not a news service. If it were up to me, al-Jazeera would be regarded as the propaganda arm of global Islamofascism and disbanded. But I don't get to make that call. Because we live in a plural society, and even those with whom we disagree get to speak.

Gannon is not a journalist

Reports the news = journalist. Employed by a news service + reports the news = professional journalist.

Gannon is working for a PR firm employed by Republicans.

So only Democrats get to report the news? Do I have that right? Only vocal opponents of the administration in power get to write the news of the day?

I'm pretty sure if you just take a minute you'll realize how insane you're being.

As for 'gay baiting' and whatnot, I really don't have time to look up and read all his gibberish.

Then howzabout you quit slandering the man, huh? If you don't know what you're talking about, please stop talking about it.

But he did defend Santorum's rather offensive comment that you copied.

There was nothing even remotely offensive about Santorum's comment. Hell, I'll defend Santorum's comment. Do you think that that disqualifies me from reporting the news?

You'd have to exclude some American societies for that to work. (e.g, Boston marriage)

Um, no. The acts of judges who legislate from the bench are the problem. See why it's so important for people like Santorum to give voice to the conservative point of view? Because people like yourself don't even understand it. How can you disagree with something when you don't even understand it?

He's defining marriage as a (presumably sexual) 'relationship not between homosexuals'

No, he's not defining marriage at all. He's merely saying that for thousands of years, marriage has had a definition, and that definition has been between a man and a woman. See what I mean? How can you disagree when you don't even understand?

quite a few societies have never distinguished between a relationship with a man and a woman and two women

That's a false statement. There are many cultures in which polygamy (or even polyamory) is accepted, but in those cultures the marriage is between one man and one woman. The fact that the man in question gets to marry another woman at the same time doesn't mean the union is among three people. The union is between two people, and two of those unions exist and overlap at the same time.

See why Gannon's work was important, even if you don't agree with him? Because there are people like you out there who are so confused about the subject that they don't

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[DavidTC]

I shouldn't even respond to this, because you keep making up positions and abscribing them to me. I have never under any circumstances said that Talon News can't publish whatever the fuck they want to publish.

However, like I said, they aren't a real news service. Just like I am not a real news service. All that means is that the government shouldn't be giving them a fucking press pass to the Whitehouse, just like it should not give me one.

Now, we can argue over exactly where something becomes a real news service, but I'm not playing that game. Congress, when he tried to get a press pass there, quite rightly realized it wasn't a new service, and failed to issue them one.

This, of course, doesn't mean they can't watch the press room on C-SPAN. Hell, as they are working for people with close ties to the administation, they could probably get a personal interview with the president.

However, the rule is, to be invited in the press room, you have to be a member of the press. That's been the rule since there was a press room.

And trying to make him out to be a member of the press makes the whole situtation worse. The press has standards and rules they hold themselves to, witness the recent CBS flap where they failed to follow said standards. Do you really want 'Talon News' held up to the standards CBS or even Fox News is held to? Because it would fail horribly.

And you can claim al-Jazeera isn't a news service when they get a press pass.

As for the sex issue: You keep saying false information. If you don't want it to be an issue, stop lying about it.

For your information, though, you may want to read why that information was discovered, over on te Daily Kos. It was discovered because no one knew who the hell 'Gannon' was and why he was allowed in the press room. The way he was tracked down was through the addresses listed in whois on the domains he owned. It wasn't 'let's go look up dirt on this guy', it was 'You know, this guy in the press room lobbing softball questions appears to inexplicably be operating under an alias. Who is he? Let's find out everything we can about 'Gannon' so we can track down who he really is.'. (You wouldn't believe some of the suggestions along the way, like he might be John Poindexter's son.)

You'd have to exclude some American societies for that to work. (e.g, Boston marriage)

Um, no. The acts of judges who legislate from the bench are the problem. See why it's so important for people like Santorum to give voice to the conservative point of view? Because people like yourself don't even understand it. How can you disagree with something when you don't even understand it?

It is you who do not know what I'm talking about. Please google 'boston marriage' before saying anything more. I'm almost tempted not to correct you, because you ranting about something you don't know anything about is funny.

As for your marriage comments, you have no idea what you're talking about, because you've fallen into a translation trap. Every society has a word meaning a 'relationship between a man and a woman'. If you call this relationship 'marriage', then, yes, almost every society considers a marriage to be a relationship between one man and a woman. That is, however, circular logic.

In reality, societies have names for almost every type of relationship, and the legal and societial aspects given to 'marriage' here could be given to other relationships elsewhere. For example, consorts of important men were often accorded the same status as we give wives now, even if they were male. (Whereas wifes were relegated to childbearing and low status.)

And there's the interesting custom in some Native American tribes where a woman could magically be declared a man for all intents and purposes, gain a wife, and even father children, although we must assume there was a little behind-the-scenes arrangement there with some other man.

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[As Seen On TV]

they aren't a real news service

Why? What makes Talon News not a real news service while al-Jazeera is a real news service? You can't just draw a line and say that everybody you disagree with isn't a real news service. That's Nazi propaganda shit.

The press has standards and rules they hold themselves to

That's actually a commonly held myth. The only rule the press subscribes to is "don't piss off so many people that our ratings drop."

Do you really want 'Talon News' held up to the standards CBS or even Fox News is held to? Because it would fail horribly.

You say that, but I don't believe you. I've read Talon's stories. There are no apparent falsehoods in them. They're news, just like the stories that go out over the AP wire are news. It's just that you don't happen to like their opinions about things, so you declare that they're not real news! over and over again. More Nazi propaganda shit.

And you can claim al-Jazeera isn't a news service when they get a press pass.

You do know that al-Jazeera has been in the briefing room since 2002, right?

you may want to read why that information was discovered

It was discovered because the President's political opponents went dumpster-diving. That's not something about which I'd brag.

It wasn't 'let's go look up dirt on this guy',

That's a lie.

you've fallen into a translation trap

More Nazi propaganda shit. You're more interested in muddling the meanings of universally understood words than you are in actually having a conversation. You're more interested in weaving little webs of lies than you are in communicating.

Thank God the Americans were smart enough not to elect any of your kind last November.

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[DavidTC]

I should have given an example of what I mean by the marriage thing. So here it is:

Let's assume we live in a country where everyone sits on stools. We call these 'demels'.

Some people would like to allow manufacturers to put backs on demels, and others claim that is immoral, and, to bolster this claim, say that 'Every country has defined a demel as a flat surface to sit on about two feet in the air, with no back'.

So, is this true, we wonder? We drive due west into our country-next-door, America, and ask them 'What do you define a *we quickly page through our translation dictionary* 'stool' as?'

And they tell us that, of course a stool does not have a back. The anti-back people are vindicated.

Except, of course they aren't. That's crazy. Americans sit on chairs, and see no problems with backs. Americans just don't call them stools, and someone decided the correct translation of 'demel' was 'stool', so Americans don't have backs on their 'demels'.

And it's not just a translation issue, it's a cultural ones. People who study any historical society call 'a legal binding between a man and a woman to produce children' marriage because that's what we call it. But, in reality, 'marriage' includes a lot of different things, and quite a lot of those things were available to people of the same sex in various societies throughout history. (Including, like I said about the native americans, the ability to produce children, although that was obviously faked and everyone knew it.)

In fact, I'd wager that everything that goes along with marriage, be it 'love', 'security', 'status', 'money sharing', 'children', etc, have, at one time or another, be available to people of the same sex.

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[DavidTC]

What makes Talon News not a real news service while al-Jazeera is a real news service?

First clue: Fake names.

And I didn't say that al-Jazeera was a real news service. Again, you're just making up stuff and ascribing it to me.

And, as far as I can tell, al-Jazeera is not in the briefing room. Considering we bombed their building in 2003, having them in the briefing room in 2002 would be a bit crazy. But, hey, apparently you can just make shit up and don't need to cite it or anything.

But, hey, it's not my job to answer why the White House is apparently opening the door to everyone carrying a notebook.

That's a lie.

Did you read the discovery? It's right there on the Daily Kos, out in the open. People were looking up 'Gannon's address by searching the whois records, and suddenly went 'What the hell are these domain names doing here?'.

I'm not even going to respond to this topic anymore until you can tell me the name of the person who first posted the list of domains. (The list that, I repeat, was the only was anyone figured out who Gannon was.) Until then, I will assume you didn't even read the discovery, and are therefore just repeating what others have said.

Or is it suddenly off limits to even wonder who people in the briefing room are? Especially when they've been named in connection to the Plame CIA leak? (Not that I'm saying he's guilty of any wrong-doing at all, just that it's perfectly valid to go 'Who is that guy?'.)

More Nazi propaganda shit. You're more interested in muddling the meanings of universally understood words than you are in actually having a conversation. You're more interested in weaving little webs of lies than you are in communicating.

Um...he's the one who made the assertation. No non-English speaking country defined 'marriage' as anything, as that is an English word. As that makes the translation rather important, I do not feel that pointing out his translation is screwy is 'Nazi propanda shit'.

BTW...you just Godwin'd.

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[As Seen On TV]

Fake names

We've been over this and over this. Again: the use of pen names among reporters is extremely common. At least three members of the White House press corps use pen names when they publish. Most married female reporters choose to write under their maiden names because that's the name under which they first established themselves. A pen name is not a "fake name," and it's not a disqualification.

It is, however, a damned convenient excuse for you to dismiss somebody you don't like.

And, as far as I can tell, al-Jazeera is not in the briefing room.

You are wrong.

But, hey, it's not my job to answer why the White House is apparently opening the door to everyone carrying a notebook.

Actually it kind of is. Because you're the one saying that they shouldn't. See, I don't know about you, but I believe in a free press. I think that anybody with a notebook should be allowed to sit in on the briefings. Now, the room is only so big, there are only so many hours in the day, there are practical concerns and so on. But keeping somebody from reporting the news for ideological reasons is, as I've said, Nazi propaganda shit.

Please stop your Nazi propaganda shit.

People were looking up 'Gannon's address by searching the whois records, and suddenly went 'What the hell are these domain names doing here?'.

They were dumpster diving. They were trying to dig up dirt to get him shut down. Don't even try to pretend you're not perfectly aware of this.

Who looked up Eason Jordan's home address, after all? Who went dumpster diving on him? Nobody, because the conservatives who wanted him to answer for his accusations weren't interested in smearing the man. They were only interested in the truth.

You're trying to defend the indefensible. Why?

I'm not even going to respond to this topic anymore until you can tell me the name of the person who first posted the list of domains.

Heh. You go right ahead and take your ball and go home. I think the record of this conversation stands perfectly well on its own.

Or is it suddenly off limits to even wonder who people in the briefing room are?

Straw man argument. More Nazi propaganda shit.

Especially when they've been named in connection to the Plame CIA leak?

Guilt by association. More Nazi propaganda shit.

No non-English speaking country defined 'marriage' as anything, as that is an English word.

Semantic games. More Nazi propaganda shit.

Do you have anything to say, or are you just going to reach back into your bag of logical and rhetorical fallacies again?

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[internic]

"That's Nazi propaganda shit...More Nazi propaganda shit...More Nazi propaganda shit."

Now who's making ad hominem attacks? You could at least try to relate your smears to the topic at hand.

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[As Seen On TV]

You could at least try to relate your smears to the topic at hand.

If you read the whole thing instead of quoting out of context you would see that that's exactly what I did. I tried to point out every instance of a Goebbels-like rhetorical fallacy of propaganda technique. I caught several, but I may have missed a few. The commenter seems quite expert at their use.

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[DavidTC]

Hey, moron...a pen name is the name that everyone knows you write under. No one knew who Gannon was.

As for 'discrediting'...damn right. He managed to get into the press corps and lobbied softball questions, some of them without any factual basis. (For example, he once treated a Rush Limbaugh joke as if it were real. That is, he asked a question based off it in the press room.) Someone asked who the hell the goofball was, and it turns out that no one knew.

Now you can argue that anyone should be able to get in there if they want, and, hell, I'm with you on that...but they can't. Or, at least, not usually.

As for the Plume leak...he knew the contents of the memo that was leaked before almost anyone else knew them, and this has gotten the government interested. I didn't say he was guilty of anything, in fact, I explicitly said he wasn't, but you like quoting out of context. But it certainly make him a legitmate target for investigation, especially when no one knows how the hell he really is. Um, duh.

As for the marriage thing...claiming that every society throughout history has defined marriage as something is a fucking sematic game.

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[As Seen On TV]

Hey, moron...a pen name is the name that everyone knows you write under. No one knew who Gannon was.

What do you mean, "no one knew." Everybody who needed to know knew. The FBI knew. Dan Bartlett knew. Scott McClellan and his staff knew. Gannon's employers knew. No, your problem is that you didn't know. Which fits in perfectly with your "freedom for me but not for thee" mindset.

He managed to get into the press corps and lobbied softball questions, some of them without any factual basis.

Do you read The National Review? You should. There's a great article in today's issue that takes a little trip back in time. During the Clinton administration, the President -- not just his staff, but he personally --regularly got questions so soft they'd make Gannon's look like the Spanish Inquisition.

Drop the smoke screen about "softball" questions. The bottom line here is that you're pissed off because Gannon was openly supportive of George W. Bush, and that's just something you can't tolerate.

he knew the contents of the memo that was leaked before almost anyone else knew them

That's a lie. Gannon didn't say word one about the memo until two days after it was described in detail in the Washington Post. If you compare the way Gannon described it to the Post article, you can clearly see similarities that lend credence to the idea that Gannon got his information from the same place everybody else got theirs: the morning newspaper.

it certainly make him a legitmate target for investigation

Bullshit. Drop the pretense, please. He was "a target for investigation" for one reason and one reason only: He was openly supportive of George W. Bush. There are some folks out there --you chief among them, apparently --who think that only liberals should be allowed to report the news. Or maybe you believe that only members of party Y should be allowed to report the news when party X is in power ...oh, wait. No. I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I can't do that. Because if that were the case, you would have gone apeshit on March 19, 1999, when Ken Walsh asked Bill Clinton, in an open press conference, whether Clinton would be mad at the people who called for his impeachment in 10 or 20 years when it all had blown over. If everything you're saying about yourself is true, then you would have absolutely blown your stack at a question like that coming from an open supporter of the President in the press room. But you didn't, did you? No, you only decided to start flinging poop when you found somebody who was just as partisan as every other member of the press corps, only on the side opposite your own.

You are a fucking hypocrite.

Re:McClellan Irregulars

[DavidTC]

Oh, yeah, you caught me. The media sure went easy on Clinton.

Oh, no they didn't, and five pretend softball questions doesn't prove anything. For one thing, the only actual softball questions was by Sarah McClendon. Sarah McClendon. She probably is, indeed, a poster child for loose credentialing process, as the article claims. But not because she asked easy questions or was left leaning, but because she liked to yell random accusations at presidents, including Clinton.

She's the one who started asking Clinton about drug operations being run out of Mena, Arkansas in January 2001 which was a rather crackpot theory, (Instead of normal questions to outgoing presidents, like the transitition to Bush's presidency, or, hell, Florida election issues.) and that's just something I can find in ten seconds of googling. She wasn't a friend of the administation...any administation. She asked completely oddball questions, and, apparently one of them was completely opposite her usually oddball direction. Many of them were about lunatic things, like the rather infamous time she asked Clinton why he didn't do anything about UFOs.

The only reason she was still there was historical and the fact that, once in a while, she asked a 'crackpot question' that actually turned out true. She was like the press room's Drudge Report.

The other questions are not a proof of anything except that a wide variety of questions get asked. It's basically 'there were more important issues existing at the time', but, as I would expect from the National Review, it does absolutely no research into whether or not those questions had already been asked. (Or quite likely, did the research, and didn't print it, because they had been asked.) Asking the president something over and over in a press conference is not incredibly useful, especially if he gave a canned reply the first time.

Well, except for the rape question, which was asked twice. Asking the president twice about rape and being deferred to his lawyer both times doesn't seem, to me, incredibly like 'avoiding the issue' as the article claims, at least not by anyone but the president.

Now for the Plame leak:

He asked the question: An internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports. Do you dispute that? in an interview with Wilson.

According to the Washington Post, only they had a copy at the time he conducted the interview. Now, the memo's existence was common knowledge, but he appeared to demonstrated knowledge of the contents.

And in fact, he admitted he had the memo at that time in the interview with Wolf Blitzer less than a week ago. Blows your hold 'he read the newspaper' theory away, doesn't it?

So the question now arises: Did he get access to the memo because the Post is leaky? Or did he get access because it was independantly leaked to him?

And that's all I said. That was part of the the reason he was 'uncovered' by the blogs, because he was talking about having seen a memo that, according to the Post, only they had.

And I have no idea which it is. I suspect it's just the first, and the FBI seems to think so also.

But, you like to make up positions for me to hold, so I'm sure you've made up one where I've already tried him for treason. I don't think he did anything that was the slightest bit illegal, and I don't think that was obvious at all when the question was asked 'Hey, who is this guy, anyway?', which apparently no one should ever ask. It looked like he could be part of the leak.

As for your stupid assertation that enough people knew who he was: That's not that I said. I said to be a pen name, you have to have your real name known. That's what a 'pen name' is. Otherwise it's just a pseudonym, a fake name. Real journa

Many hands make light work

[rhysweatherley]

While the open source angle is interesting, this is really a case of "many hands make light work". Just as open source projects can bring a lot of people together to work on a project, from all over the world, blog media is now doing the same for investigative reporting.

The reason why we've rarely seen this effect in media before is that it used to be very difficult to get all of the interested parties in the same news room at one time. Usually only one or two journalists at a paper would be working on a story, and had limited bandwidth to check all the angles before meeting the deadline.

Now, the work can be distributed between large numbers of people who care about the story itself, more than the deadline and the paycheck.

I think the trick for blog media will be finding a Linus Torvalds who can bring it all together into one coherent pile at the end of the day. And a Richard Stallman to set the ethical tone to ensure that it doesn't degenerate into the gossip column nonsense that currently passes for TV news.

Great ideas, but don't forget the design.

[Stick_Fig]

I think it's good to have open source journalism in a sense above blogging -- wikis are the closest thing to offer it, but there are still problems in the accuracy department.

On top of this, there are elements of print news that blogging and wikis have not yet touched. I lay out news pages for a living, and the biggest problem that I've seen with blogging is the lack of consistent graphic designs that help make sense of the story. It's something that's difficult for one person to do on top of writing.

If you get fifty people working together on an open source wiki newspaper, it becomes easier for someone to pick up that baton, just as it makes it easier for journalists to have specialized focuses -- one focusing on politics, one focusing on entertainment.

The article mentions how Firefox has done well as a grassroots product. It has, and it's a solid product. However, as I've said before in open-source threads, there's a reason for that. They have their stuff together on both the marketing and the coding end.

Example: The fox logo is far more appealing to look at. The browser layout is clever and open-ended. The grass roots have emphasized how much better Firefox is with security.

Journalism's the same way. Infographics and strong designs can draw a reader into a story and narrow an extremely complex story into a short, understandable bit of information. Every time I see an open source product with undercooked marketing, I know it won't hit the mainstream -- word of mouth is helpful but can only go so far. Open source journalism is the same way -- if a group of people can do it right, it will work really well.

If they can do it better than most newspaper sites, even better -- most newspaper sites don't keep with standards, and therefore their sites aren't as appealing. It's a great field that could open up if a wiki project had all their ducks in a row.

Re:Great ideas, but don't forget the design.

[BorgCopyeditor]

Are you implying that the Emacs/GNU/HURD mascot is poorly conceived and drawn and gives the products associated with it an air of profound unprofessionalism?

If you were, that would be a good point.

RTFA

[ortcutt]

Maybe you could RTFA before posting. Just a helpful hint.

Rathergate, Churchillgate, Easongate....

[otis wildflower]

... I'm surprised that the submitter didn't mention the successes of the 'other side' of blogging...

But then again, maybe I'm not.

Re:Rathergate, Churchillgate, Easongate....

[otis wildflower]

Funny, you didn't mention a word about Easongate.

Perhaps everyone who's pushing to have official transcripts and videos released is a "full of shit right-winger", but the man voluntarily resigned first.

Now I call bull on that.. Why didn't he just have his full transcript and video released, then stand by his comments? I mean, out of principle? I mean, if the man was railroaded, he should have stood his ground and had the full comments released, since they would obviously disprove all his antagonists.

Right?

Re:Rathergate, Churchillgate, Easongate....

[Zed Pobre]

Funny, you didn't follow the link which proves Eason right.

Speaking as the person that wrote the page you linked to (Hi Slashdot! Please don't hurt my server; it's small.), I'd like to point out that it doesn't (and was not intended to) "prove Eason right", but to demonstrate that he had reasonable cause to believe even the most extreme version of what is claimed he said.

There is a subtle, but important difference there. Especially since there is no record available at this time of what he actually did say.

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Doc Ruby]

You are an exceptionally stupid Anonymous Coward. That original post was a false statement to produce a predictably opposite response: a Troll. While my response was not predictable, but exposed the post for the deeper drivel it really represents, beyond a facile troll. Now that's hip.

Except...

[daveschroeder]

...that there's no accountability (and "other bloggers" don't count).

Bloggers - many with vicious partisan political and personal agendas - post "news" stories, and want all the visibility and rights of journalists, with none of the responsibility, and definitely no representation of the "other side of the story", as it were. Stories that are nothing more than glorified op-ed get passed around as gospel, and get read by many who are less discriminating about the sources for their information, and take it at face value, because if it's written intelligently on a decent looking site and a bunch of people are agreeing with it, it must be the complete truth.

This is what we want from journalism?

Re:Except...

[Killswitch1968]

Excellent post. Sorry teknomage had to ruin it for you with is reply.

Re:Except...

[tsotha]

...that there's no accountability (and "other bloggers" don't count).

What does that mean - "No accountability"? What accountability did CBS take for the obviously trumped-up Bush National Guard story? Anybody get sued?

Oh, sure, some people got fired. But not the right people. What about Seymour Hersch and all his "anonymous" (made up from whole cloth) sources?

I see much higher quality news from blogs. The networks and newspapers don't check facts, they don't dig into stories, and they don't print retractions unless they're forced to.

Bill Moyers out-and-out slandered James Watt in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Did they print a retraction? No. They never do if they can get away with it.

Look at the "stringers" AP uses in the West Bank. They don't even know who those people are - sometimes they report what happens, sometimes they're just propagandists for Hamas. That's fact checking?

What about Geralldo broadcasting from Pakistan and telling the viewers he was in Kabul?

I could go on and on. The reason people have this rosy idea about large news organizations is said organizations never used to get caught when they were biased, incompetant, or just plain lazy. If you compare the blogs to established news organizations instead of the lofty journalistic ideal, the come out looking pretty good.

Incidentally, why don't other bloggers count? Major media organizations don't criticize each other - look, Bill O'Reilly came to Rather's defense, for Chrissake!

Re:Except...

[ErikZ]

You mean like your post? How about a little fisking...

Bloggers - many with vicious partisan political and personal agendas
Many? As in hundreds? As in a majority? As in "I have no idea?"

and want all the visibility and rights of journalists, with none of the responsibility

Proof please, link please, logic please, give us SOMTHING to show you just didn't make up an attribute of bloggers.

It's possible that some may not want the responsibility, but then I stop reading them.

and definitely no representation of the "other side of the story", as it were.

Bloggers tend to react to stories. The "other side of the story" is already out there! The blogger LINKS to the "other side of the story" and so it's represented by the person who posted it originally!

Stories that are nothing more than glorified op-ed get passed around as gospel, and get read by many who are less discriminating about the sources for their information, and take it at face value, because if it's written intelligently on a decent looking site and a bunch of people are agreeing with it, it must be the complete truth.

Yeah, do you even read blogs? The stories can be passed around as gospel. But only after it's been read, and accepted by the reader. Who usually checked the links and reads the other side of the story.

So, what you're ranting against, is that people are reading someone's response to a current situation, making up their own mind, and passing around the link to the blogger.

You sir, are an elitist.

It's amazing that so many slashdotters understand the "Cathedral and the Bazaar" when it comes to software, but can't draw parallels to other aspects of life.

Kos doesn't believe in open source journalism.

[Slash Watch]

A fundamental tenet of open source journalism is being able to pass comment on it and to contribute.

If you try to sign up on his big "journalism" website, there's a 24 hour delay before you can post comments and a one week delay before you can post diaries.

Maybe I'm being paranoid here, but isn't it convenient that if you want to sign up and post a comment about a story that you want others to see, you won't be able to do so until the story (and so your comment) have dropped off the front page? Could it be that Kos isn't really interested in fostering debate at all and just wants an echo chamber for his buddies?

Re:Kos doesn't believe in open source journalism.

[BorgCopyeditor]

Maybe I'm being paranoid here ...

Thou hast said it.

... but isn't it convenient that if you want to sign up and post a comment about a story that you want others to see, you won't be able to do so until the story (and so your comment) have dropped off the front page?

That would be a truly compelling objection ... if you had to register anew each time you wanted to post a comment.

Re:Kos doesn't believe in open source journalism.

[/dev/trash]

dKos isn't about debate. It's about recruiting more registered Democrats. It obvoiusly didn't work this last election. Maybe in '08.

Re:Depends.

[salvorHardin]

"Everything is open and free" is certainly how the communists tried to describe themselves. But certainly no communist government ever has been able to achieve that ideal when put into practice.

Of course they did. I don't recall anybody going up to Stalin, looking him in the eye and saying "You're WRONG and you're a GROTESEQUELY UGLY FREAK". Well, nobody that lived, anyway.

Only way were are going to hear meaningful news

[V_IL_Len]

As corporate "news" services have become increasingly under the control of fewer people tradional news sources don't even feign objectivity and seem clearly to be propaganda arms of government and industry "open source" news distribution is the only way we will hear what is actually going on. The problem is these sources will also have their own agendas and will suffer from lack of accountability, oversight, and lack of ethics that are plaguing our current news structure. Without some form of independent, accountable, verifiable and objective entity to act as "watchdog" and transparently evaluate all news providers we will have no way to know who is telling more of the truth.

TFA is arse-forward

[WillerZ]

If anything blogging is a "legacy" of open-source. Article author clearly has no concept of how long open-source software has existed.

The GNU project was announced on 27 September 1983:

http://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial-announcement.html

Whereas the HTTP protocol became an RFC in May 1996:

http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1945.txt

Although it was in use as early as 1990.

Regardless, open-source software clearly predates blogging, as blogging could not have existed before there was a web on which to log.

Rant over.

Phil

Re:TFA is arse-forward

[teknomage1]

In addition to the 1983 date, Stallman was just codifying the ethics of the previous hacker culture of the 60's-70's. So Free Software (don't say open source when talking 'bout Stalman unless you want an email about it) is far older than these self righteous psuedo intellectual exhibitionists.

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Doc Ruby]

Actually, while the White House still hasn't answered questions like "which name was on Guckert/Gannon's day passes", he very clearly scammed his way in. You don't know the answer, either, unless... is that you, McClellan? Still trying to get those softball questions across the media radar, huh? I guess requiring questions in advance, and paying journalists to spin your press releases isn't enough - you're really putting in the overtime.

He used an alias for what exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was discovered that he was using an alias to get past White House security.

Uh, no. He was using an alias, but White House security requires you to give your name, address and social security # to get press credentials and access to CIA documents. They do a background check.

No, this guy did not "get past" White House security. He was a ringer, a shill, for the White House. A go-to guy when questions get tough.

How long had Talon news existed when "Gannon" got his press credentials? I just heard (have not yet confirmed) it was less than a week. And Talon News (Metatag: "Talon News is your source for unbiased news coverage and no-spin reporting. If you want the facts without all the slant, Talon News is the place to go for political, national, and international news.") is affiliated with who?

GOPUSA. How many of their 'no-spin' news stories were rewrites of GOP press releases?

Never mind that they've been paying off reporters to promote their agenda. Does anyone remember reporters Karen Ryan or Alberto Garcia from last year?

We can't trust the science. We are not told the truth until it's too late. Now we can't trust the independent reporting of what we think is the media.

Our country is in some deep trouble.

Open Journalism

[Doc Ruby]

Because it's closed. Just like developing stories in traditional broadcast media. Bloggers share developing info, blur the lines between drafts and releases for early access, share across competing organizations. That's a lot like open source, where the source is the text of the stories, and the repository is the blogs themselves. It's certainly the "bazaar" to the traditional media's "cathedral".

Re:Open Journalism

[As Seen On TV]

Bloggers share developing info

Yes, just like other reporters do, only bloggers aren't limited to publishing one edition per day or one column per week or whatever.

blur the lines between drafts and releases for early access

Um, no. Bloggers do not actually do that. Bloggers don't publish drafts. Drafts, by definition, are not visible to readers.

share across competing organizations

I don't think that's really true, because bloggers don't really compete with anybody. There's no profit motive attached to blogging --unless you're Andrew Sullivan --so there's no competition involved. It works more like a rumor mill or office grapevine than it does like a marketplace.

That's a lot like open source, where the source is the text of the stories, and the repository is the blogs themselves.

No, it's not like that at all. In particular, bloggers are aggressively protective of their property rights. A key element of the "open source" model is the abolition or abdication of property rights. Bloggers jealously guard their property rights, responding immediately and unpleasantly if somebody steals their content.

Also absent from the blogosphere is the "open source" movement's actively hostile attitude toward commercialization. The vast majority of bloggers are also professional writers. They use their blogs to hone their skills and to generate buzz about themselves in order to drum up business. This is the exact opposite of "open source's" anti-capitalist ethic.

The "open source" metaphor just doesn't work here, I'm afraid.

Re:Open Journalism

[BlackHat]

The "open source" metaphor just doesn't work here, I'm afraid.
But what if I tried anyway?

Re:Open Journalism

[Doc Ruby]

You are forcing both blogging and open source into your own definintions. Blogging is reknowned for publishing immediately, without the traditional draft process. It is unparalleled for reusing other blogs' content, through quoting, linking, and exploiting leads. It's uniquely organized for cooperation between competing publishers - different websites - who temporarily share audiences that shift from day to day among their sites. That doesn't require a profit motive - the publishing model is distinct from, though related to, their revenue model (which might be "none"). All of which is quite different from traditional journalism, where reporters will jealously guard their info, usually sharing only with other members of their closed publisher. Bloggers compete for readers, some of whom might represent revenue/profit through donations, ads, subscriptions and otherwise. Or just popularity. Open source similarly is not anathema to profit. That's the distinction between "Open Source" and "Free Software"; the former is a substantial industry, dwarfing the size and popularity of the latter. While open source writers are just as attached to property rights - copyright - as are bloggers, using their property to ensure their proper credit for their productions, and to ensure they're continued to be shared.

I don't know what blogs or open source you're familiar with. But there are thousands of examples of each kind of writing that are highly parallel in their forms and structure. BTW, " All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster". You are free to redistribute this comment without restriction, provided you include both the reference to its author, Doc Ruby, and this credit / free distribution requirement.

Better term

[greg.steffensen]

This is a classic example of why the term "open source" was poorly chosen. The forces that power what's usually called the "open source software movement" aren't tied to the creation of software. There's definitely strong ties between the blogging phenomenon and our software movement, but the term "open source" hides them. Lawrence Lessig would prefer that we call blogging an example of the power of "Free culture." If you think that's too grandiose, I'd offer "Free journalism."

That's completely untrue

[As Seen On TV]

You might have seen some coverage of Jeff Gannon, a conservative reporter who lobbed softball questions during White House press briefings. It was discovered that he was using an alias to get past White House security.

That's not true. Jeff Gannon is a pen name for reporter James Guckert. He didn't adopt his pen name to try to get past security, and even if it had it wouldn't have worked. Everybody in the White House press corps has to go through an in-depth Secret Service background check. That's not the kind of thing that can be bypassed using a fake name.

Gannon (or Guckert, if you prefer) resigned over links to inappropriate pornography. These links were uncovered during what basically amounted to a witch hunt. Granted, he had no business being involved with porn, and it's entirely appropriate for him to resign over it, but the links never even would have been found if certain people with a political agenda hadn't singled Gannon (or Guckert) out for negative attention.

Re:That's completely untrue

[Anonymous Coward]

Bzzt. Wrong. Take the RNC talking points elsewehere.

The facts are: A "reporter" using a fake name, gets a perpetual daily pass into the white house while working for a news organization that is 4 days old and is funded by GOPUSA.

The story is: How did this person get past security and admitted and re-admitted to the press pool on a daily basis (could anyone else here do that) without being connected? Was someone allowing the security to be bypassed to bring in the ringer? If so, who...

The military gay sex porn sites stuff is ironically funny, but not the real issue.

Re:That's completely untrue

[As Seen On TV]

No background check

I'm afraid that's not correct. Anybody with an "A" pass gets a cursory background check to verify that they actually are who they say they are, and "A" passes aren't allowed in the press room. To get access to the press room, Gannon had to get a press pass, which means he got a more extensive background check: The Secret Service contacted his employer to verify that he really worked there, and they verified his home address.

Please stop the conspiracy-theory talk. It's just silly.

Re:That's completely untrue

[grcumb]

"Gannon (or Guckert, if you prefer) resigned over links to inappropriate pornography. These links were uncovered during what basically amounted to a witch hunt."

It's true that some people have crowed about the hypocrisy of an openly right-wing pundit being associated with gay sex sites. It's also true that some people have said that this hypocrisy is the story. BUT it's also true that the people doing the original research have decried this time and again. They've said repeatedly that this is not the story.

Of course, if you'd read the group's press release, you'd already know that there is not one word about the gay sex sites. Some cranks may be crowing about a photo of Gannon/Guckert in tighty-whiteys, but the people who are doing the actual research are deliberately not. They seem to think it's enough that a guy with two days' training, working for a news organisation that was four days old should be able to get a White House press pass using a false name. They also find it strange that on many occasions 'Gannon' wrote articles in which text lifted directly from Republican press briefings appeared unattributed. Most importantly, they worry that he might have been used to leak a story that resulted in an undercover CIA operative being outed. That last one is a felony offense, and is punishable by hard time in a federal prison.

For some small-minded people it's about the gay sex sites. For most, though, it's about the systematic subversion of the Free Press.

Re:That's completely untrue

[As Seen On TV]

It's true that some people have crowed about the hypocrisy of an openly right-wing pundit being associated with gay sex sites.

Domain names, not sites. The names which were registered by this guy never actually went anywhere. I'm as disappointed in him as anybody, but let's keep the facts straight here. While what he apparently did is bad enough, the accusations that have been leveled at him don't appear to be supported by the facts.

Of course, if you'd read the group's press release, you'd already know that there is not one word about the gay sex sites.

No, but it is chock full of blah-blah about Gannon's lack of journalism experience, a change I find fascinating given that Markos Zuniga had zero journalism experience when he was invited to cover the Democratic National Convention last summer.

This whole hoo-hah boils down to one thing and one thing only: Gannon was openly conservative, and an open advocate of the administration. That drives some people up the wall. Some people seem to believe that it's only okay for people who are open critics of the administration to report the news. These people are shamefully misguided about how a free press operates. A free press means that people you don't like get to print their stories and opinions too.

But the very worst part --the very worst part --is the way some people participating in this mess have accused Gannon of taking payment for advocacy. First, there is zero evidence that any such thing ever took place, and an accusation along those lines is tantamount to libel. But second and more importantly, Markos Zuniga was a paid member of Howard Dean's political campaign when he was given press credentials to the Democratic National Convention. I mean, come on. "Systematic subversion of the free press?" You've got some nerve.

Bottom line: Where were these people when Eason Jordan told members of the Davos panel that the American military systematically targeted reporters in Iraq? That's the same Eason Jordan who admitted last year that CNN deliberately buried stories that would be unflattering to the Baath party in order to keep their Baghdad bureau open.

A story is a story, and that's the truth. But it's the selective pursuit of stories that bugs the shit out of me. If you're only going to chase stories that advance your political agenda that's fine, as long as you don't get all high-and-mighty when other people choose to do the same thing. Be a man, suck it up, and admit that you're practicing advocacy journalism.

Re:That's completely untrue

[As Seen On TV]

Of course, if you'd read the group's press release, you'd already know that there is not one word about the gay sex sites.

Heh. I just got around to reading Howard Kurtz' story on the subject.

Markos Moulitsas, a San Francisco liberal who writes the popular Kos site, said of Gannon: "He has been extremely anti-gay in his writings. He's been a shill for the Christian right. So there's a certain level of hypocrisy there that I thought was fair game and needed to be called out."

Asked if digging into someone's personal and business activities was proper retaliation, Moulitsas said: "If that's what it took to really bring attention to him, it's one of those unfortunate facts of reality in the way we operate today. It's sex that really draws attention to these things."

Tell me again how it's not about the sex angle. Tell me again how it's only "cranks" and "small-minded people" who are pushing the gay sex aspect of the story.

Re:That's completely untrue

[As Seen On TV]

The man's name is Markos Moulitsas, not Zuniga.

His legal name is Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. Zuniga is his last name. He writes under the pen name of Markos Moulitsas. Oh, but writing under a pen name is okay as long as it's somebody you agree with, right?

he had a disclaimer on his website that he was on Dean's payroll

Not until long after the convention, which he covered as a journalist.

Kos was supposedly something of an outsider in the Dean camp.

I don't even know what that's supposed to mean.

Howard Dean's presidential candidacy has been irrelevant for a long time. Why do you even feel the need to mention this?

Why do I ... what? You can't be serious. I feel the need to mention it because this is precisely what lefty bloggers have accused Jeff Gannon of: paid advocacy journalism. Markos Zuniga took checks from the Dean campaign at the same time as he was covering the Democratic National Convention. This isn't even in dispute. It's a plain, simple fact. And yet when Markos Zuniga levels unfounded, false accusations at Jeff Gannon for doing the same thing, nobody even stops to notice the irony.

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Doc Ruby]

How about "I can disagree with *you* any way I please", you contemptibly conceited ignoramus? Get too original, and the cretinous ACs don't even notice they've been bitchslapped. Now YOU dance, Anonymous monkey Coward.

Marcos "Screw them" Zuniga

[bohnsack]

I wouldn't listen to a word this hate spewing turd has to say.

From a Reason article:

A day after four American private contractors in Iraq were murdered, their bodies burned and publicly dismembered, "Kos" wrote:

"I feel nothing over the death of mercenaries [sic]. They aren't in Iraq because of orders, or because they are there trying to help the people make Iraq a better place. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them.

A screenshot of the post in question. I don't think association with this vicious hate monger is in the Open Source community's best interest. Is it?

Re:Marcos "Screw them" Zuniga

[bonch]

The reaction to that comment was so great, Kerry's official website pulled their link to the site with a statement that they didn't agree with such opinions.

Like with poor software, open source journalism also means having the freedom to say really stupid things (and delete the post later and backtrack about it).

Although I am a little surprised such a politically-minded website as DailyKos gets free press on Slashdot like that. I've never seen a link to LittleGreenFootballs or Powerline, even as they broke the biggest "closed source" journalism scam of the year--CBSNews' phony documents. If there was ever a case of open source journalism cracking open the flaws of closed source journalism, that would be it. But Slashdot rejected submissions about it. D'oh.

Re:Marcos "Screw them" Zuniga

[ortcutt]

If you are a mercenary, you know what you are getting into. I don't think I'd say "Screw them." but they made their beds and they slept in them.

Re:Marcos "Screw them" Zuniga

[ortcutt]

Private security contractors? I think that's the euphemism for mercenary.

Worth noting

[mcc]

...that CBS's failure of journalistic integrity in the "Bush Memos" case wasn't a "big story" anywhere except in the blogosphere.

Also worth noting that this "big story" had no functional outcome whatsoever. CBS was in no way held accountable for what they did, they in no way had to answer to the public, they never even admitted fault. Even in the blogosphere, the story really didn't serve any purpose except as a tool for right-wing blogs to distract people from the real evidence concerning Bush's possible failure to fulfill his national guard duty; I would estimate that the vast, vast majority of the people who are aware 60 minutes ever broadcast those memos first heard of it through the blog backlash pointing out the memos were falsified. The entire thing was just a self-referential tempest in a teapot, a media source reporting on a media source which ran a story which only gained importance because another media source then reported on it.

Re:Worth noting

[rhysweatherley]

Also, the right-wing bloggers in the Rather case never dug past the surface. OK, the document was a forgery. Great. So who forged them? Well meaning friends of the person who supposedly wrote it? Karl Rove? Who? That's the story begging to be written.

The reason why the right-wing bloggers stopped is instructive: their goal was to discredit Rather so that the "Bush was AWOL" story could be pushed off the front page. They never intended to get to the truth.

In the case of Gannon, the goal wasn't to discredit him but to find out who he really was, who he worked for, etc. To get past the surface impression and do some real investigation. In the process, some salacious details were turned up. But they were never the reason why the investigation was started, or is continuing.

Scamming CBS via the Web

[shanen]

You expose your stupidity and Bushevikian bias with the "(obviously) fake" praise of that brilliant scam--which probably goes all the way back to Karl Rove, though it will probably never be proven exactly by whom and how. The timing and channelling of it was just about perfect from a propaganda perspective, and the plausibility of the memos was so high that I think there are only two cases, and both of them surely point back to someone with the political cunning and scrupulousness of Rove.

Case 1 is that BushCo got a hold of the original memos when they were purging Dubya's TANG records, and they prepared highly similar fakes to be released through controlled channels at the appropriate time. In this case, their main concern would be how to create sufficiently plausible fakes and how to get them exposed to the public by some suitably "liberally biased" channel, but they also had to make sure the fakes contained "proper" flaws that wouldn't be detected until too late.

Case 2 is that the CBS versions were accurate and real, not fakes, but were effectively recast as fakes using the rumor-mongering power of the Internet. In this case, Rove (or possibly someone working for him) may still have known about the original memos, but they had already researched and prepared a discrediting response if the memos ever surfaced in public. However, in that case, the timing was incredibly lucky for Dubya, and I have trouble believing in such miraculous coincidences.

The crack about "watch the watchmen" was especially hypocritical. Or does that mean you're a big fan of Michael Moore?

Nope, I didn't think so.

Re:Helen Thomas

[ortcutt]

I didn't say anything about Helen Thomas. I comdemn her comments just as much as I do Gannon/Guckert's. Why do you assume that I would condemn one without condemning the other?

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[As Seen On TV]

Quoting Salon on this issue makes about as much sense as quoting Markos Zuniga. Not exactly the last bastion of objective journalism, are they?

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Doc Ruby]

For one, no one outside the Slashdot office knows whether he was fired. Another, no one can know whether he would have written anything about this. Then there's the entire sense of the post, some kind of sarcastic statement, hyperbolically opposite the implied meaning. The only way to decipher the last line of gibberish is to infer that the post itself is being disclaimed as false. I'm sure you've got some way to make that all "true", but only in your own preconceived notions.

Kos' Open Source Factoids For Ya

[Anonymous Coward]

Yo, folks.
1) That Kos guy really appreciates the /. community. He appreciates the fact that a bunch of people come together bringing a variety of knowledge and fleshing out issues.
What the DKos site has morphed into over the past couple of years is similar but different.
There is a diary part of the site where people can have their own blogs. This provides additional content to the site and often good observant posts are promoted to the front page.
The "Gannon" story was researched because someone started the ball rolling and asked for others to help out in answering questions. Other DKos posters pitched in and together they put together a story. They pursued something which the Main Stream Media hadn't done to that point. And, even if various outlets beyond the Boston Globe pursued it, they would have had 1-3 journalists interviewing, fact-checking and finding leads.
That "old school" process is slower though it often gets the story right and occasionally, like the 60 Mins II story on Dubya's Nat'l Guard papers, gets it wrong.
The open source angle is simple: a bunch of people who do not know one another get one another's back and fact-check using the Net and interview and do leg work to verify or discredit a story. With facts.
Like Reagan once said, Facts are stubborn things.
"Open source journalism" ain't perfect, does seem self-congratulatory and is a result of the Me-too generation. But, if New Media doesn't work like this occaisionally, are you going to rely on getting less information from the oldschoolers? Are you going to tune out to news when the Jesus Juice trial in Califonia takes up the Old Media's attention as they tell us everything which does NOT matter to our daily lives?

2) Kos helped set up the software for Dean back before the Scream. He was a consultant who helped develop the entire architecture for the blogging apparatus for the Dean campaign. That software is open source. In fact, everything on the DKos site is open source, both the constantly updated code and the content. Just scroll to the bottom of the main page to see that you can use anything on the page without attribution or paying royalties.
You could make your own blog site with diaries using that code. Or you can cite any content without rubbing anyone the wrong way.
Peace out.

OT: Kos is a little bitch

[autopr0n]

I'm a liberal, but kos is such a shrill bitch it's ridiculous. This is a guy who's so blinded by partisanship that he thought Gray Davis would beat the recall election in california. His reporting of the Iraq war is so stilted it makes him seem like he's rejoicing in our every failure, because it hurts bush political as much as it hurts the Iraqis physically.

Kos will print any gay rumor about any republican wether or not that particular republican has an anti-gay agenda or not and claim it's an example of Conservative hypocrisy. apparently, if two conservatives disagree, they're both hypocrites. (conservatives do this with liberals all the time, and it's just as annoying).

And, if you complain about this on the site, you get banned.

Re:OT: Kos is a little bitch

[ortcutt]

Ken Mehlman is gay and the he's the chairman of the RNC, a group which supports an administration that wants to pass a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Explain to me what isn't hypocritical about that.

Re:OT: Kos is a little bitch

[Adam.Steinbaugh]

You're right in that case, but what cost Kos my respect was his outing of Alan Keyes' lesbian daughter and her girlfriend. I mean, Keyes, for one, was down by FIFTY POINTS in the polls at the time, but regardless, it was wrong: if Maya (his daughter) were publically out and proud and Keyes treated her poorly, it'd be newsworthy. But she was semi-closeted and so was her girlfriend, who was kicked out of her mother's house pretty quickly after Kos went public with sensationalistic photos he (or another blogger) found in Maya's personal, private web journal.

Re:OT: Kos is a little bitch

[ortcutt]

I think he was under the impression that she was out. If you're not out and you're the daughter of a well-known columnist, it's probably not a good idea to post something about your sexual orientation on a public site. That being said, I think it's definitely valid to ask "Dr. Keyes, do you think that you're own daughter is evil and immoral?"

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Doc Ruby]

Actually, their research and reporting has very few legitimate critics. But I guess you're just following the rightwing playbook of denigrating the messenger, when the facts get too hot. Complete with strawman hyperbole! As Seen On TV!

Aaaagggghhhh!!!!

[iced_773]

The election's over! Why did this even come up??? To all the Democrats: Yes, I'm sorry Kerry lost. But now someone even more liberal (Hillary) can run in 2008 and very likely win. To the Republicans ranting about Rather: You guys won! So why haven't you dropped it already?! We are all very strong in our opinions about the election, but we should be careful where we vent. Here is not the place, especially in a discussion about the open source philosophy.

Funny...

[gordgekko]

I love the old guard media. Bloggers are irrelevant! They have no fact checkers! They aren't trained!

Wah? They find out some obscure conservative journalist got past White House security?

Bloggers are relevant! They are fact checkers! They don't need training!

Whatever. Daily Kos is as worthless as most of the media is.

MOD PARENT UP

[Infinity Salad]

Hits the nail on the head. The blogging = open source is more of an analogy than a truism. Nitpicking the definition of 'open source' misses the point the article was trying to make.

Yeah, the victim is always to blame

[shanen]

Of course CBS should have admitted it was their fault they were so brilliantly scammed. So when are you going to admit it was your fault you got conned into voting for Dubya?

hogwash.

[ignu]

That's complete crap. This "journalist" is a complete dolt who's qualifications entail a two day journalism course and writing for a web site that gets less traffic than most teenager's livejournals.

Most of his "articles" were lifted word for word from White House Press briefings.

Check out the quality of his writing when he's not cutting and pasting from the whitehouse.

The fact that he had militaryescortsm4m.com registered is only interesting because it exposes his total hypocrisy, as he routinely bashed homosexuals in his "articles."

Re:hogwash.

[As Seen On TV]

Again, that's fine. But it's sort of a fundamental assumption in this country that we don't restrict press access just to people we like, or to people that we think are good reporters. Hell, I always thought Helen Thomas was incredibly bad at her job, but she never got kicked out of the press room, did she? Our government doesn't operate behind stone walls. It's no more appropriate for you to call for Gannon's expulsion than it is for me to call for Eason Jordan's expulsion.

I might be more persuaded that this were something other than an openly partisan issue if it weren't for the fact that everybody who got up in arms about this was a member of the "Bush = Hitler" crowd from before the election. It seems to me that this is just a matter of trying to find fault with anybody who openly supports the President's agenda. And, as we all know, if you look for fault, you're going to find fault. No surprises there.

Oh, and bashing somebody for hypocrisy is, I shouldn't need to point out, the height of hypocrisy.

Re:Helen Thomas

[ortcutt]

I sort of assumed that you wanted to make a relevant comment. This article was only about Gannon/Guckert. If you aren't claiming that I'm a hypocrite, then what was the point of your post? Do you want to dig up every comment that reporters have ever made in White House Briefings? Maybe that would be a good project to post on your website rather than on this topic.

nor rejoycing

[ignu]

furious. i don't buy that you're a liberal, as you're spewing right wing radio talking points almost word-for-word.

this idea that liberals "rejoice" in iraq failures is disgusting... but i think it's pure projection. republicans are ecstatic any time they "prove" one of their points... and when evidence of one of their points come out they harp on it for months.

i've never seen a liberal say "yessss, three more people died in iraq."

At least on Kos, people talk about the casualties of the War... both to our soldiers and to civilians. That doesn't happen in the right-wing world or main stream media.

Eason Jordan better example

[Derling Whirvish]

A better example is the resignation of CNN's Eason Jordan. He said that U.S. soldiers were deliberately targeting journalists in Iraq -- a flat out falsehood. No one would have heard of the story except for the pressure from bloggers. After the story broke most of the mainstream meadia (Howard Kurtz) circles the wagons and defended him. Now that pressure from blogdom has lead to his resignation.

Re:Eason Jordan better example

[Derling Whirvish]

The repeated attacks on Arab journalists,

Repeated? Hardly. Arab journalists located in the vicinity of hostile troops have no claim to protection. Just as U.S. journalists embedded with U.S. troops would receive no sympathy from you if their unit had come under fire and they been killed correct?

resulting in many deaths, even after those journalists repeatedly alerted US officials as to their position,

Huh? "Repeatedly alerted US officials as to their position"? The only incident that I know of was the video cameraman killed during a firefight when he pointed his shouldered camera resembling an RPG launcher at U.S. troops from a hidden position behind a wall. That was pretty stupid behavior in a combat zone. And it got him killed, but how did he "alert U.S. officials as to his position"?

can be explained either as deliberate or as wildly reckless, and the latter is only a bit better.

It cannot be explained as deliberate. The U.S. military goes out of its way to protect journalists even when that protection results in personal danger to them. They do not target journalists. Claiming so, for political advantage, does not make it true.

The wildly reckless part is on the side of the journalists. Exposing yourself on a city street while shouldering what looks like a missile launcher and standing on the side of the people who are dressed as civilians while you yourself are dressed similarly during a firefight is deadly reckless.

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Kenrod]

And if someone from moveon.org was lobbing softballs at President Kerry, Salon.com would be writing stories about the price of tea in China. This is a story on Salon because a right-winger being a bit dishonest. That's it. Left-wingers get a free (day) pass.

"Open Source" equals "Bazaar"?

[Soong]

If traditional big news media is the "Cathedral" then blog/community sites are the "Bazaar". Does that fit better than the phrase "Open Source Journalism"?

It's not like source code. There is not so much of the behavior of "submitting a patch" to some news story. Everyone just posts up some content or comment (or both in one).

Anyway, the "correct" term will doubtlessly fall to the "hip" term if they don't happen to be the same.

Hilarious! Eason Jordan resigns

[Kenrod]

At almost the exact moment this Kos suck-up story was posted, Eason Jordan, CNN News Chief, was resigning!

His resignation follows weeks of right-wing blogosphere activism over his comments that the US military was deliberately targeting journalists.

So what's a bigger story - left-wing bloggers busting an unknown right-wing "journalist" working the system to lob a couple of softballs at President Bush, or right-wing bloggers busting the freaking head of CNN news?

OS Journalism Discussion has been around a while

[Anonymous Coward]

Kos isn't the first to discuss this concept, its actually been bandied around quite a bit in Journalism circles over the past few months. (Kos is a Political Blogger, not a journalist by trade.) Jay Rosen in his blog http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthi nk/ has written quite extensively on the subject.

A piss poor example.

[Visceral Monkey]

Markos is a piss poor example of anything other than an over inflated sense of self-worth and ego. A better example of what he's talking about would be the National Guard story that CBS shat out on the world. That's not to say the example cited isn't news worthy, but holding it up as an example without even discussing the other more worthy ones is a joke. Liken it to holding up the Mexican-American war as an example of how countries fight wars as opposed to WWII. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Look at there Rolemodels

[teknomage1]

Most bloggers are of a generation that's growing up with the likes of Fox News and other such bastions of objectivity.

Re:Look at there Rolemodels

[teknomage1]

aw damnit should be "their rolemodels" I'm becoming a slashbot. I might as well talk about everything we're "loosing."

Why did bloggers have to break this.

[Kenrod]

So, if this guy Gannon was regularly attending press briefings on day passes, why didn't any of the Big Media Reporters there bust him? They knew:

1) he had been denied a permanent pass and
2) he was working for a right-wing organization and
3) he was lobbing softballs day after day

My opinion: they didn't think he was doing anything wrong.

Re:No, they make the bed you sleep in safe

[ortcutt]

What was Saddam going to hurt me with? Spitballs? There weren't any WMDs there. He wasn't supporting any terrorists. I was safer before we invaded than I am now.

Kos is a veteran

[Aexia]

And what exactly was wrong with his statement?

Slashdot is a blog

[Paladin144]

....and yet everyone on /. seems to hate bloggers with a passion. Granted, /. is a community blog/bulletin board, with a different setup than your average political blog. But I see so many people (from the mainstream media down to the lowest slashdotter) assume that political blogs ARE blogs. Bullshit. They are NOT the totality of blogging. Blogging is much more than some right/left wing person ranting and investigating. Some of the best blogs are completely different in design and execution. And I think the majority of blogs are set up by 13-year old girls who talk about whatever they had for breakfast. And that's fine. I don't have to read those blogs! Why does the harmless self-expression of others threaten slashdotters so much?

Now, I won't disagree that "open source journalism" is just a buzzword that was created on a blog somewhere, but have a little patience; they're trying to describe something we don't have a word for yet. And the words we do have are weighted down with pos./neg. connotation. Really, what we're talking about here is non-corporate media, which can encompass anything from indymedia.org to powerlineblog.com to engadget.com.

I dunno about anybody else, but I'm tired of the negative, cynical, close-minded mindset that so envelopes slashdot about such issues. Open-source is an ideology, and it's an extremely important one. But let's not deride people whose interest lies outside of technological pursuits; people who (gasp!) use technology to do work rather than work on technology. Bloggers have different opinions and interests than you. Is that so wrong? Can they not be united in the struggle against the corrupt and fascist mainstream media/evil software companies? Do they not value their freedom, just as we do?

Furthermore, I've read many posts in this thread already, and even open-source advocates can't seem to agree on what open source is! Some say it's a way of working cooperatively. Some say it's simply not closed-source. Could I pry a few minds open here and suggest that it is both and much more? It is nothing less than the united struggle against tyrrany, the tyrrany that we all KNOW that those in power will impose if given the chance. Without our resistance ("our" including all who stand up for their rights), can you imagine the distopian hell we would live in? We only have to look into our recent history to find examples, and we only have to look to totalitarian states currently in existance to realize the importance of freedom.

Simply put, open-source is about freedom and openness (glasnost). Surely most of us here recognize the power of open-source, but we do not yet know it's full potential. Conversely, we do not yet know the power of blogging. Yes, "blog" is just a stupid word, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that blogging has the power to take down totalitarian governments. If, through the internet, people in a restrictive regime are enabled to communicate effectively the government no longer controls the flow of information. When that happens, a critical mass can be achieved and revolution is possible. Look at Ukraine's election for a recent example.

Blogging is not just ranting and boring shit (although that boring shit might actually serve as "cover" for the more explosive material), it's about communication, freedom and openness. Blogging and open source are going to change our world. Are they over-hyped? Well duh. Who do you think is doing the hyping? The mainstream media, because they don't know how to do anything else. And if you hate blogs because the media hypes them, well then I guess you're just buying what they're selling.

Just like on my blog, I don't expect anybody to care or read what I have written, but I feel a heck of a lot better for having written it. Mod me as you will.

But...

[the_skywise]

That story has nothing to do with technology.

This story is about "Open Source". Y'see...

(And this is a story about MEDIA... not POLITICS)

'Coz it's Kew...

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[jfern]

Kos clearly states that he is MarKOS Moulitsas Zúniga.

Jeff Gannon does not, he was hiding his identity.

But that's not OPEN SOURCE

[the_skywise]

Open Source is keeping software source code "open" so that technological innovations and solutions aren't buried and turned into technological dynasties.

What Kos did is grass roots "activism" made possible in part by Open Source code but read mostly by people who use MICROSOFT WINDOWS and Internet Explorer.

They're not the same concept and they shouldn't be.

Re:But that's not OPEN SOURCE

[Paladin144]

They're not the same concept and they shouldn't be.

That wasn't my point. If you missed it, it's that they're natural allies. They spring forth from the same ideals - freedom and communication and openness. The openness of journalism, now that every body can do it, and critique each other, is the same openness of software code, allowing disparate people all over the world to critique and modify the code. Both create, communicate, analyze and refine. And they both depend on freedom to do that.

What Kos did is grass roots "activism" made possible in part by Open Source code but read mostly by people who use MICROSOFT WINDOWS and Internet Explorer.

What does it matter what browser they use? Just because you're a fanatic....

...Oh wait, I'm wasting my time - you're a fanatic.

Just like Kos.

I think the parallels are striking

[Rescate]

The "source code" in this case consists of information, facts, leads, investigations, opinions, arguments, etc. etc. All of these things are out in the open for anyone to read and critique, just as open source code is free for anyone to read and critique.

With open source software, the product is a program. With open source journalism, the product is a story. In both cases, the input to the development process is there for all to see. You don't have to rely on a source that won't let you see how their product is developed, whether that product is Microsoft Windows or the New York Times.

In the Gannon case, DailyKos is being used almost like a "Sourceforge" for journalism; an organizing site that acts as a repository for the output of the project. Leaders organize assignments, and create "diaries" that are used to organize facts uncovered so far. These leaders are not the people who run the site; they are just users who have stepped up and shown the ability to organize things, motivate people, and move things forward. Sound familiar?

I think it's clear that the parallels with open source software development are many. The people at DailyKos working on the Gannon case are not developing open source software, but they are using open source development processes.

I believe Markos is making the point that open source development processes are applicable to more than just software development; they work pretty well for journalism as well. "Bloggers and their opinions might be mildly interesting, but the ability to pool our efforts on issues that capture the collective imagination is what really gets me excited."

That's in dispute

[JoeBuck]

Some White House correspondent said he saw "Gannon" wearing a regular White House press pass. Of course, that's not proof, but the White House has lied before.

So What About Slashdot?

[miller60]

I'm a big fans of blogs and blogging. But Slashdot pioneered open source journalism - in all senses of the term - long before the blogs gained momentum. Tech journalists have been getting story leads from Slashdot for years. Now political reporters are getting story leads from blogs, and suddenly it's a revolution! The model for open source journalism exists, right here. The blogs are simply broadening the installed base of participants.

Re:Depends.

[bobbuck]

salvorHardin: Of course they did. I don't recall anybody going up to Stalin, looking him in the eye and saying "You're WRONG and you're a GROTESEQUELY UGLY FREAK". Well, nobody that lived, anyway.

Yeah, too bad that was before personal nucleic force-fields. May the Galactic Spirit be with you.

Re:Depends.

[he-sk]

Open Source works because of much more than capitalist methods.

It's transparent. It's a social network (aka. community or rather many communities). Depending on the project it's more or less peer to peer. It's also based on trust both between developers and users.

Plus, you can actually build a business model based on open source. Which is great, because you'll always need money.

Re:No, they make the bed you sleep in safe

[ortcutt]

False. No WMDs have been found in Iraq. I know there are still a lot of people in denial, but it's pretty sad that you're still lying to yourself.

Should Ann Coulter Resign?

[ortcutt]

Ann Coulter actually wished violence against journalists. You can watch the video here.

Quicktime

Windows Media

Re:Should Ann Coulter Resign?

[Derling Whirvish]

Resign from what? She holds no position anywhere. She works for no one.

Daily Show Connection?

[ty_kramer]

On the January 27th 2005 Daily Show (Christine Todd Whitman as guest), they played Jeff Gannon's softball question and made fun of him for asking it. Little did they know that he'd be "outed" a few days later. Perhaps the bloggers started researching this guy when the Daily Show put the spotlight on him?

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Derling Whirvish]

Actually, while the White House still hasn't answered questions like "which name was on Guckert/Gannon's day passes",

Why does that matter? Men of letters have long used pen names. Did the previous president call himself William Blythe or Bill Clinton? How about James Carter vs. Jimmy Carter?

Wikinews

[jacoplane]

A good example of "open source" or "free as in speech" journalism is Wikinews. Granted, organisations like the AP and Reuters provide on their wires every news story Wikinews will (probably) cover, but that's beside the point. The point is that there exists a news source that licences it's content under the GFDL which means that anyone can take the stories on Wikinews and do whatever they like with them that springs to mind.

One might want to write a tool that analyses news sites and not want to worry about whether or not scraping the news content is legal or not!

Of course, many detractors will say that there is no way that a wiki news source could ever be accurate. The same thing was said for a wiki encyclopaedia. It turns out that mass-collaboration can sometimes be a more accurate form of editing than traditional forms. I don't want to mention Rathergate so I wont :)

In any case I think the whole argument about Wikipedia/Wikinews 's accuracy is pretty much irrelivant. This is a free information source that exists and if people don't want to rely on it they are more than free to do so. In any case there is a big push happening right now to improve the validation of articles within wikipedia. Check the comments of an article i wrote on this subject for more information.

P.S. If you live in Europe anywhere near Brussels or Berlin at all please try to make it to the protests against software patents! I'll be travelling from Amsterdam to Brussels on the day.. if anyone wants to catch the train with me please reply here and we'll get in touch!

Re:Wikinews

[jacoplane]

The link I had meant regarding the reliability of wikipedia can be found here. Be sure to check the comments!

Eason Jordon

[raoulortega]

He suddenly resigned today in response to criticism of some of his statements at Davos recently. Statements which probably never heard about if you read so-called "papers of record" or what his network (CNN). Coupled with Dan Rather's implosion last autumn, I'd say keeping the White House Press Corps free of any right-wing influence is pretty small in comparison.

Rather (CBS), Jordan (CNN)... Gannon??!?

[smitth1276]

Why is Kos getting so worked up over a reporter noone has ever heard of who works for a news agency that noone has ever heard of... ??? Meanwhile--in the real world--"open-source journalists" have held to account (forced resignation or retirement of) 2 huge media figures: Dan Rather at CBS and Eason Jordan, chief news executive at CNN.

I guess it's better to arrive late than never, but let's not pretend that "bringing down" whats-his-name Gannon even approaches the level of significance of Rather and Jordan.

The fact that the media chooses this particular incident to extoll the virtues of "open source journalism" betrays their true motives.

BTW, if I made any typos or weird sentences, no smarmy comments... its late.

Re:Rather (CBS), Jordan (CNN)... Gannon??!?

[zapadoo]

The issue is not whether "Kos" is getting worked up over the 'Gannon' issue or not. No, the real meat of the matter is more about the way the administration is - politely put - managing perceptions through the paid, or at minimum 'invited friendly' journalistic support.

Put impolitely, they are gaming the system, going beyond "spin" to manufacturing news coverage. One man's media is another's propaganda just a little further down the slippery slope.

Re:No, they make the bed you sleep in safe

[ortcutt]

Wow. Pesticides. You're really grasping at straws now. So, pesticides count as WMDs. That's good to know because I wouldn't want to use WMDs on my house plants.

Important update.

[skids]

Sorry to thread-jump, but the following link of recent news deserved to be at the top:

OSPA formed

2/11/2005
Writers, publications to launch open source alternative press association

Blogging Without Responsibility

[FlukeMeister]

First up, the group of bloggers that worked out that Jeff Gannon is a pseudonym deserve praise. Had he been fired for anything related to his activities as a White House plant, or because of the massive breach of White House security that his daily presence represented, then Bloggers should indeed be celebrating something great.

However, bloggers should not be celebrating. Rather than demonstrate any sense of morals, or display anything approaching professional levels of conduct, the bloggers involved went for the cheap kill. They got him fired for being gay.

What a person does in his private life is private business, and the right to privacy is one that bloggers of all people should respect. By ignoring this right, and indeed persecuting somebody because of their private activities, these bloggers are stepping over a dangerous line.

Some might call it tabloid journalism; it's the sign of a mob mentality. Pursuit of a goal through any means necessary - even the public exposure and humiliation of having a sexual preference cost somebody their job - that's nothing to be proud of.

Some advice to bloggers: think about what you do in your private life. Think about whether you want everyone with a web browser finding out about it.

What about quality?

[LuSiDe]

No offense, but blogs are regulary of low quality IMO. A lot of brogs are. Hence, i'm not so sure how many of those blogs actually are qualified as 'journalism'.

Futhermore the text is often copyrighted but not in an 'open source' style such as CC og GFDL (of which i don't consider the latter 'free').

Now, i'm involved as techie in a local media project and one of our concerns is: How can we build up a mediapool while also having some kind of quality assurance? To explain it futher: people, or certain subjects or happenings who or which normally are ignored have a chance at our network. Basically we use 'karma' but we're trying to find a way how new people will have to proof themselves -- which makes it different than say Indymedia. From what i can say, its definetely not easy.

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Doc Ruby]

There's no comparison between a standard nickname and a completely fake name. Especially when the fake name is used as part of that obviously evasive process, to get access to WH press conferences without background checks. With the complicity of the press secretary. That is one of the worst examples I've yet seen to excuse this quack, and reverse the guilt onto some stock rightwing bugbear. You're not fooling anyone, except maybe yourself.

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Doc Ruby]

What critics of their research and reporting, that would discredit the facts in the article to which I linked? None, right, Anonymous Coward? I understand your sympathy with a rightwing "journalist" using a fake name, crafting up formulaic attacks without substance. In fact, is that you, "Gannon"?

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Doc Ruby]

BTW, your own crude deception is evident when you quote one sentence from the article to which I linked, and omit the following:

"Additionally, questions remain whether his passes were issued under his alias or his real name."

You're really nothing but a crude liar. I understand there's a job opening at Talon news.

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Doc Ruby]

You've got to stop calling yourself on the extension for quotes, AC.

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Doc Ruby]

Hey, how do you like it when The American Conservative publishes warnings about "the coming of American fascism"? Quotes Paul Craig Roberts, Reagan's creator of "supply side economics", on the "brownshirting" of American Conservatism? When even your talking points mill is sounding the alarms, where are you going to get your cues?

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Doc Ruby]

Someone from a PAC lobbing softballs at their declared favorite presidential candidate is a lot different than a reporter attending WH press briefings to lob softballs at the president. Especially after that reporter has been weaseled into the briefings by the press secretary. After normal access was unavailable because even Capitol Hill denied him a regular pass, on the rarely needed (but appropriate) grounds that Talon isn't a legitimate news organization.

A bit dishonest? Your completely hypothetical example NEVER HAPPENED, and it's your counterexample of "left-wingers get a free pass"! You rightwingers have no integrity whatsoever. Where's your outrage that Bush's press conferences are a contrived joke? Of course you have none - all your outrage is reserved for imaginary left-wing media elitism. This is a story despite the popularity of your morally supine partisanship.

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Derling Whirvish]

Especially when the fake name is used as part of that obviously evasive process, to get access to WH press conferences without background checks.

What evasion? He was submitted to the same scrutiny as any other journalist who used a day pass. There is a background check on those who use a day pass you know -- it's not like you can walk up to the gate and get signed in that same day. You've gone from being not sure if a fake name was used to now being absolutely sure that not only did he submit a fake name, it was done to purposely evade security -- and the WH Press Secretary was complicit! That's a huge stretch.

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Derling Whirvish]

BTW, your own crude deception is evident when you quote one sentence from the article to which I linked, and omit the following:

"Additionally, questions remain whether his passes were issued under his alias or his real name."

You're really nothing but a crude liar. I understand there's a job opening at Talon news.

But you yourself said:

Especially when the fake name is used as part of that obviously evasive process, to get access to WH press conferences without background checks. With the complicity of the press secretary.

You seem to have no doubt about whether or not a fake name was used to bypass security and yet berate me for not quoting the part where there is doubt. You contradict yourself in two posts. You have two opposing viewpoints in your mind at the same time and firmly believe in both. That's a sign of mental illness in some places.

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Doc Ruby]

No, I read the reporting on his actual process, which I posted in this thread. He applied for the daypass, which apparently no one else uses, after he failed to qualify for the required Capitol Hill pass. And even his use of the daypass is more like the retired "card file" pass system. So he's clearly a unique special case, whose details were known to the press secretary, who was there to lob softballs. This is a clearly rigged PR operation, made even more tawdry by the flimsy denials of its unquestioning consumers.

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Doc Ruby]

No, I mention that the fake name was used as part of the evasive process. I don't go so far as to say it was instrumental in the evasion, but it is consistent with it. Until the White House comes clean on whether or not the pass was issued to the fake name, and, more importantly, whether the less-deep background check was performed on the fake identity, I won't be able to say for sure. That's ambiguity, part of the real world. Balancing it without stress is a sign of intelligence. Inability to handle it is a sign of mental illness. So is projecting mental illnesses onto those who threaten you. Take a pill.

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Derling Whirvish]

I mention that the fake name was used as part of the evasive process.

And

Until the White House comes clean on whether or not the pass was issued to the fake name

Those two thoughts are contradictory again. You state flat out that a fake name was used for evasion and then that you say you are not sure if a fake name was used.

You are an extremely confused person. Oh, and BTW, the WH confirmed today that his real name and SSN was used for the pass application and the BG check.

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Derling Whirvish]

He applied for the daypass, which apparently no one else uses

What B*llsh*t! Like he's the only person ever to use a day pass. On any one day at least one-third of the journalists in the WH briefing room are on a day pass. He's not the first to ever use one.

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Doc Ruby]

No, you are so determined to find some way that this could be someone else's fault but the White House you worship, that you are conflating the two statements into one. The process was evasive, in a variety of ways, many so far documented. And the fake name was used as part of the process: the name by which the guy was known, called upon in the briefings. Part of the evasive process, but not the background check part. So you can't concoct a strawman for me to defend. It's enough that this guy was a softballer. It's worse that he was ushered in as a special case. It's worse that people like you are struggling to defend the deception, by attempting to demean people who are pointing out the simple truth of a complex BS job.

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Doc Ruby]

Your lack of dignity in this thread leaves me little reason to respond, when all your bitching is easily undermined even in the article to which I linked earlier in this thread. But I do get a chance to say "fuck you", because

"But the current day-pass system was not set up to give permanent access to reporters who, like Guckert, fail to qualify for a hard pass."

So stick your punctuated whining up your ass. Gannon was a fraud, taken in under the White House wing, so he could shill for Bush on the pay of his GOPUSA masters. While moonlighting as a gay prostitute/pimp when he wasn't blowing their antigay line. You want Gannon, you're welcome to him. He's in good company.

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Derling Whirvish]

Guckert didn't "fail to qualify" -- he never applied in the first place.

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Derling Whirvish]

It's common occurance for a journalist to change their name and it is perfectly acceptable for them to use that name in their work. Would you refer to Kweisi Mfume as Frizzell Gray or "Pee Wee" Gray? What then is Mr. Mfume evading?

Re:Thanks for the textbook example.

[Doc Ruby]

Even if he applied, he couldn't have been accepted, because he didn't have the prerequisites. What's the point of replying to you? Your mind is made up, I shouldn't confuse you with the facts. Or the documentation. You've had the most simpleminded excuses for Gannon/Guckert's sleazy evasions. The detailed article to which I linked, documenting Gannon/Guckert's inappropriate path to WH press briefings, says

"But the current day-pass system was not set up to give permanent access to reporters who, like Guckert, fail to qualify for a hard pass."

But then, you didn't understand the other line in it,

"[...]Gannon was the only reporter to skirt the rules that way, obtaining daily passes month after month for nearly two years."

You haven't read the evidence. You don't care about any evidence. All you care about is that the rightwing guy get off OK. So you can whine about the "liberal media" (which is doing everything it can to avoid this story - showing how aligned it is with the rightwing propaganda machine). You have your own sick reasons to attach to the right wing, and its pack of lies, its unaccountable perverters of America in government and beyond.

In the past couple of days, there's new reason to believe that Gannon/Guckert actually had a hard pass, though everyone's denying it as fast as they can - because he wasn't entitled to one. There's a very embarassing story here, about a rightwing propagandist prostitute getting unacceptable access to the president, white house, and probably classified documents, such as figure into the Valerie Plame case. No amount of rightwinger clucking is going to cover that up. If you had any self respect, you'd figure out whether your country, or your team, deserve your allegience more. It's easy to guess, from your posts, which you'll decide.