Glenn Reynolds has a funny post regarding the recent Action Figure Hoax. And he asks the following poignant question:
...But it raises another question. Professional journalists are always sniffing at the Internet's amateurs, and claiming that their superior fact-checking and editorial resources produce a better product. Yet, once again, they've fallen for an obvious fraud.
...Perhaps today's journalists are the kind of people whose parents didn't let them play with military toys, but this still calls into question just what we're getting from all those editors and fact-checkers. A story in today's Christian Science Monitor asks, "Are bloggers journalists?"
Perhaps we should start asking if journalists are journalists.
As I mentioned earlier I listened to Air America on monday to see how Al Franken would spin the election. He was interviewing someone in Beruit (can't you get someone who actually in Iraq!?) and he asked her "Did the insurgents fail?".
How did you get into the mindset were you would ask such a question. When someone survives a murder attempt you ask, how do they get away, not did the murderer fail. If someone survives a shark attack you do not ask did the shark fail? How much must you hate President Bush that you root for his failure in Iraq that you can actual form the thought, "did the insurgents fail?" Could CNN have fallen victim to this blinding rage as well?
