Salon's War Room does a great analysis of how the liberal blogosphere did NOT embrace the story from a few days ago about how Karl Rove was supposedly secretly indicted. While the Wall Street Journal bashes liberal blogs for running with unconfirmed stories, in fact, the story itself didn't come from a blog at all, and what's more, most of the top liberal blogs, this one included, refused to link to the story because we questioned whether it was true. Liberal blogosphere member Peter Daou even went so far as to openly criticize the "Rove has been indicated" piece just a few days ago. I guess the WSJ must have missed that.
So, in fact, the liberal blogosphere showed that we already police ourselves and already have a pretty well-developed sense of journalistic ethics.
I hate when facts gets in the way of a perfectly good story.
More from Salon's Tim Grieve:
I don't know whether Karl Rove will be indicted today, tomorrow, later this week or never. But we do understand that there's a distinction between Truthout's Jason Leopold and the bloggers who've been writing about him, and that gives us at least one leg up on the folks at the Wall Street Journal.
The Journal's Anne Marie Squeo checks in today on Leopold's report that Rove has already been indicted in the Valerie Plame case, and she uses her story as an occasion for a little blog-bashing. Squeo says that bloggers have "blurred the lines with traditional media and changed both the dynamics of the reporting process and how political rumors swirl," and she quotes Jay Rosen for the proposition that the blogosphere has a "let's see if this holds up" philosophy when it comes to news.
Just two problems here: Leopold isn't reporting on Plamegate as a blogger, and the blogosphere -- or at least the part of it we respect -- hasn't taken anything like a "let's see if this holds up" approach to his latest report. While some liberal bloggers jumped immediately on Leopold's Rove "scoop" Saturday, many others looked at the story through more cautious eyes.
