PajamaBlogging Cont'

Inquirer staff writer Beth Gillin comments on Rathergate:

Where were the filters that might have prevented these lies from being printed and broadcast?
To which the MSM replies: Who determines when bloggers are telling the truth? On the freewheeling Internet, people with axes to grind are everywhere, from Angry Left conspiracy theorists who say President Bush ordered planes to crash into the World Trade Center to Wingnuts of the Right who say the Clintons faked Vince Foster's suicide.
But in the crowded marketplace of blogging, those who deliver the goods - who do not plagiarize, flame their competitors, or report rumor as fact - rise to the top by earning the trust of their readers. The bloggers with the biggest audiences, be they left or right, do not tend to embroider, and are unembarrassed about correcting mistakes.
In newspaper and broadcast cultures, errors are cause for shame. Correcting them - by reading an apology on air, or writing an explanation for a senior editor - can be humiliating. The process, however, does instill caution.
A blogger who makes an error is quickly corrected by readers, the mistake is fixed, its discoverers thanked, and an apology issued. Everything happens in full view of readers.
Bloggers call this process of sharing and feedback transparency, and in Rathergate it has more traction than the argument- from-authority defense: "Trust us. We're CBS News."
And yet there is something to be said for the authority of the MSM. Without institutions to define news by deciding what's important, how are consumers supposed to make sense of the avalanche of information available in the digital age?

It's a fairly strightforward piece that gives Charles' his due credit. I do have a problem with the last posted sentence. The media think they have to pick out stories and spoon-feed them to us because we're not smart enough to figure out the "important" news, we are not capable of making "sense of the avalanche of information" that is available daily. Give me a break, blogs post stories that would never make it into the mainstream media because of laziness, agenda, or space. I for one do not need Gail Collins or any other editor to decide what I read, I can read Xinhua, the San Antonio Express-News, or the feed from Reuters as well as she can.

Update: The WaPo has a devastating side-by-side of real and the forged documents.