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NY Times Just Can't Bring Itself to Put CAAFlog Blogger Scoop in a Headline

Page One in today's NY Times (sub required, try Bug Me Not) "In Court Ruling on Executions, a Factual Flaw" Make that two factual flaws. The first one by the Supreme Court; the second by the Times, whose headline should read "CAAFlog Blogger Discovers Factual Flaw in Court Ruling on Executions." But the Times, like much of MSM, just can't seem to stand giving a blogger credit for a scoop.

It takes the Times til the fourth paragraph to mention that Dwight Sullivan broke the story on June 28th on the CAAFlog Blog, and til the eighth paragraph to link to his post. A post on the blog today wryly notes "It may take a few clicks to reach CAAFlog's post on the case."

White House issues statement about Times report
In his post, Sullivan noted that the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006, which was passed by Congress, did set out death as punishment for the rape of a child. In fact, none of the 10 briefs lawyers filed in the case mentioned a bill Bush signed last September adding child rape to the military death penalty.

Like the game of telephone, where the original message is lost, MSM quickly loses mention of the CAAFlog scoop, and credits the Times for the story. Dan Slater, WSJ Law Blog credits "the NY Time’s Linda Greenhouse, who ... thinks she’s caught the Court out on a flaw in its facts." The LA Times Blog doesn't even mention CAAFlog in its post.

The issue, with no mention of the CAAFlog, has reached the White House, and the Washington Post writes: "White House press secretary Dana Perino this morning said "The White House was disturbed by the New York Times report that the court’s decision might be based on a mistake..."

Likewise, UPI credits the Times for the scoop.

Only the American Bar Association blog gets the headline right "Blogger Points Out Substantial Error in Supreme Court Decision"

I'm not going to get into the tired debate over whether bloggers are journalists. Some of us are. Some of us are not. But you can't put someone who blogs about their cat into the same category as someone whose blog covers industry news or law any more than you can put "Meet the Press" in the same category as "Dancing With the Stars."

The bottom line
Mainstream media is still scared of bloggers. And they should be. We're watching them very closely. Every day. Just like they watch us. Only we credit and link to them. Maybe some day they'll return the courtesy.

Categories: B.L. Ochman, Blog Bashing, Blogging and Moblogging, Commentary, Cross Media, Dead Tree Journalism, Don't Believe the Hype, Ethics Crisis

BL Ochman | Jul 2 08 1:05 | TrackBack (0)

Comments

Most MSM news sites, from newspapers to cable TV news, are wretched in linking to external sites and blogs.

The MSM has never gotten over the way we Dan Ratherized them. That incident, crowdsourcing by bloggers, is what declared war. We actually got one of the biggest, most respected journalists, Dan Rather, fired in disgrace and public hostility.

I see MSM fools try to claim that the blogosphere is the Wild Wild West, a complete anarchy, with no self-policing or standards.

MSM journalists omit the facts of their own ethical deterioration and lack of enforced standards, including how corrections of errors in newspapers are relegated to back pages that few ever notice.

MSM sites also fail to allow comments to be attached to stories. They usually brush reader feedback to a worthless forum or a special comment page, divorced from the thread of the conversation.

MSM is still an arrogant, old fashioned, unilateral propaganda machine that has become paranoid and hostile to the peer to peer news and product recommendation system of the auto-regulating blogsophere.

The blogosphere polices itself, primarily by the fact that a crazy, rash, biased blogger is not quoted or linked to, except by other irrational fanatics.

I love the left wing and right wing and anarchist blogs for expressing their opinions, insights, research, and exposes, without filters and editors who are beholden to corporate and other influences.

Blogs represent the Rise of Individual Voice against the hegemony of mainstream propaganda. There has never been a time in history when the average person had a mode of expression on a level playing field as large institutions.

Blogs are more revolutionary, democratizing, and universalistic than the printing press or television or Hollywood.

Let the MSM be deceptive, mean-spirited, and opposed to linking to the blogospheric sources of stories. That's fine. We'll expose their tactics and attitudes, and they'll pass to footnotes instead of headlines in the history of communication.

http://twitter.com/vaspersthegrate

Posted by: Steven E. Streight aka Pluperfecter at July 2, 2008 3:47 PM

I completely agree that blogs level the playing field by giving everyone who wants one a voice.

But i don't see things as black and white as you describe. There certainly are mean-spirited and hateful bloggers, as we've seen repeatedly.

Mainstream media, however, is much more likely than the vast majority of bloggers to hide behind an unbalanced story that they call fact.

Posted by: BL Ochman at July 5, 2008 7:05 PM

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About BL Ochman

Blogger, social media strategy consultant to Fortune 500 companies, and sought-after corporate speaker B.L. Ochman heads the creative team of whatsnextonline.com. She also publishes the Ethics Crisis blog for SRF Global Translations

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