Those who Ana Maria Cox calls "humorless but dedicated" (as opposed to being full of fun but slackers? full of fun but dedicated? I'm not sure what the modifier refers to here, other than the fact that the media doesn't like someone actually calling them on their nonsense) - Media Matters for America - started the ball rolling questioning a recent story by John Solomon that tried to raise questions about John Edwards recent home sale. Now, not only Media Matters but Talking Points Memo here, here, and Greg Sargent-written spin-off The Horses Mouth continue to pound home the fact that the story lacked substance. In fact, in the Horses Mouth piece, Solomon insists that, though the story lacks anything like sourcing, relevance, or even a hint of scandal (a populist candidate for President sells his house to a corporate player is news?), it still justifies being considered (a) journalism, and (b) on the front page of a major daily newspaper because there are "questions" Edwards needs to answer. What those question are, how, when and in what manner they are to answered we are never quite told; there are implications, however, that simply because the piece may have created a cloud, Edwards should now be on the defensive.
Except, it now seems, from the sources linked above, that it is Solomon who is on the defensive. Even the ombudsman at his own paper is going to go after him - this after two of his fellow reporters questioned the article. We may actually see a journalist brought to heel because of an attack on a Democrat. The heat is not dissipating on Solomon, and Media Matters, TPM, and the rest of the big-time bloggers and web-sites should be proud of the work they have done dragging this particular cockroach out of the corners. As I noted last week, I waffle about the whole taking-on-the-media thing, but we are actually starting to see results - and if the pressure is kept up, we might see even more.
As Glenn Greenwald notes, when journalists actually do their jobs, the results are pretty surpring (this in reference to the attempted right-wing smear of my Senator, Barack Obama, specifically that he attended a "madrasa" as a child living in Indonesia). The funny thing is (perhaps it's funny; perhaps it's just a bit of schadenfreude) that journalists are always taking bloggers to task for their lack of standards, yet it has been bloggers and web-sites that have managed to call this particular journalistic dog to heel. One wonders what the implications of this are. . . .
Virtual Tin Cup
