A retraction from National Geographic upon finding faked photos. It is simple, honest, and preserves the dignity of the publication. CBS should have initiated an investigation, withheld comment pending the investigation, then issued something like this. Instead, we got this (my own paraphrase):
1) What do those stupid bloggers know anyway? Bunch of dorky geeks in pajamas, that's what they are. Why don't they get a real job with an expense account, like we've got?
2) You aren't seriously going to question this, are you? We're CBS!
2) The memo is real, d*mn it!
3) We've got good sources. Lots of expert-type people with fancy acronyms behind their names said it was real. So there, nyah.
4) Okay, maybe we didn't exactly listen to our people with fancy acronyms. But we still believe it's real, and we've found more people with acronyms to discredit our first group of people with acronyms. The new people with acronyms say it's definitely real.
5) We got it from a credible source, so it should be real. It really isn't our fault. Can't we just all get along? C'mon. We're CBS, Dan Rather. The good guys, remember? Believe us. Please??
6) Even if it isn't real, it's what he would've written. If he'd written something. Really. His secretary said so. So did his friends. It's the spirit of the thing, you know. Think of it as a reputable biography. Or a ghostwriter. That's it, a ghostwriter. Just giving voice to the original thoughts of the author. No need to bicker and argue over who wrote who. That's the way it was.
All they did was shoot their own credibility, and poison the issue for the Kerry campaign. Bush supporters actually owe them a favor.
Via Instapundit.
UPDATE:
That said, I note this post on Who Tends the Fires warning bloggers from getting too celebratory. (Also found this link on the Instamaster, but I don't think he needs me to link him three times today.):
"Some of the celebration is probably even genuine... but in every "Bloggers help take down CBS!" expose, every journalist has that other voice whispering in his/her ear: "Next time, that might be me." Old Media's going to be watching "Pajama Media" a *lot* more closely from here on in. We were instrumental in knocking a hole in not just the credibility of CBS and Rather, but potentially also wrecking the long term credibility of every other old media organ. It's more than a bit of human nature to not place all the blame for Rather's embarassment on Rather's sloppiness and willingness to lunge at a story - but to place a lot of it on the "upstart medium" that was instrumental in shooting him down. Everyone felt the toxic splash, the amount and degree of distancing and damage control attests to that."
Good point. The warning is against the media co-opting the blogs, then discrediting them. That ties in nicely with this article, "Blogging sells, and Sells Out":
"I should have seen the writing on the wall earlier this year when the World Economic Forum, the ferociously trend-following CEO club, sponsored a panel session on blogging at its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. The discussion quickly turned to the commercial possibilities of blogging, leading one advertising executive to wonder why the big media companies didn't swoop down and buy up the popular blogs while they were still cheap.
At the time, the idea of buying a blog struck me as funny, like trying to buy a conversation. Now, having seen blogs I admired mutate into glorified billboards, and having witnessed the emergence of the "sponsored" blog (in which the blogger is literally an employee of, or contractor to, a corporate owner), I can see who's likely to have the last laugh."
I'd add the idea that someone in the media may decide to do an expose soon on how the blogosphere gets things wrong and can't be trusted. With links. I stand by what I write, but am I 100% certain I've gone back and posted updates to every item where new information has surfaced that makes my old opinion crap, no matter how tired I am? Ladies and gentlemen, check your archives.
Just a thought.
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