Above (click for larger image): Paul Mirengoff of Powerline speaks at the American Political Science Association. Next to Paul (from left to right) is John Klenker of the Claremont Review of Books, Scott Johnson, also of Powerline, Peter Cannellos, of the Boston Globe, and Bill Gertz, of the Washington Times. (Bad photo, I know, but it's from a camera phone). Charmaine of Reasoned Audacity sat right behind me and has a few better photos here.

Report from the panel: Wasn't able to stick around and meet Paul or Scott from Powerline because I had to rush off to a job interview.

Two memorable observations from the panel. First, a heated exchange betwen Peter Cannelos and Scott Johnson. Peter accused Scott of engaging in conspiracy theory tactics. By not mentioning the fact that the Globe had run a front page story about the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Powerline had selected out information to make it look like The Globe was not covering the story in a balanced way. This ommission paints a picture of a conspiracy. Thus, this shows that blogs can be a negative force and are not very reliable. Peter seemed to take one of Scott's posts personally.

Scott came right back at Peter, and he seemed visibly annoyed. Scott made sure to point out that The Globe had done a generally better job of covering the 2004 campaign in a fair manner than other MSM outlets. However, he pointed out The Globe's non-coverage of Kerry's 'Christmas in Cambodia' lie. That, he asserted, should have been a major story.

Peter then made a pretty outrageous claim. The facts, he said, about the Kerry
'Christmas in Cambodia' story were in dispute. Some veterans, he claimed, said that they might have been in Cambodia--it was really hard to tell. This, even though Kerry eventually admitted the story was a fabrication.

Peter then acquiesced to one point: this kind of criticism of the MSM is a valid funtion and helps the MSM do their jobs better.

Scott then made it clear that saying there is bias in the MSM is not constructing a conspiracy theory. I, he said, do not believe in conspiracy theories.

Later, during the audience question and answer period, Michael Barone showed up announcing himself as 'a new blogger.' I hadn't noticed him before as he was sitting in the back. What was interesting about Barone's comments was that he seemed to know a lot about bloggers. Often times public media figures start a 'blog' and really aren't part of the community. Barone seems connected.

Other notable discussion at the panel included Captain Ed's coverage of the developing Able Danger story and Powerline's reluctance to comment on the scandal. Paul used this as evidence that some of the major blogs have a self correcting mechanism. Blogs with large readerships risk alienation when they cannot verify their claims.

The most annoying sentence uttered at the panel, and I think it was Scott who said it, was when he mentioned Bill Ardolino of INDC Journal, the man who is determined to make 'orgle' an acceptable term. Anyway, we love Bill's stuff, but, what, no love for The Jawa?

PS-Super-sekret message to Charmaine. Rusty Shackleford blogs anonymously, but I saw you there. I was sitting right in front of you.

Posted by: Rusty at 02:53 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 562 words, total size 4 kb.