the war on Terry

I knew it. I just knew it.

You see, last week, when I received a second reply from Nightline co-anchor Terry Moran—chockfull with another correction, a lengthy verbatim, and an additional, uh, let’s call it a “dig”—it sent my mind and my googling fingers off in so many different directions, that, when it came to composing a further response, I really couldn’t decide where to begin. But, somehow, somewhere, in the back of said mind, I just knew that if I waited long enough, Terry would show me the way.

And so he did on Wednesday’s edition of Nightline.

During the live lead-in to the taped piece on former Senator/TV personality Fred Thompson’s latest move toward maybe running for the Republican nomination for president, Moran stated that “Nine percent of leaned Republicans” favor Fred in a preference poll. Yes, he used that word—that “term of art,” as Terry himself referred to it in his comments here—“leaned,” and he did so without explanation or, I might add with a note of disappointment, even so much as a raised eyebrow.

I make this point because, as you might recall from last week, Mr. Moran commented on this blog that he used this term “leaned” even though he “was worried” that “some people might not grasp it.” Moran then added as, again, let’s call it a “dig,” that he now could see his prediction that we wouldn’t understand his “term of art” was “correct.”

As I explained then, his summary judgment was incorrect because it specifically referenced the section of the post where I explained what “leaned” could mean—something Terry never attempted, either during last week’s broadcast or in his comments. (More on Gore and his 17% of leaned Democrats later in this post.)

Nor did Moran attempt to explain “leaned” when he again used this insider lingo on Wednesday night—six days after he stated that he now knew his audience didn’t understand what the term meant! Which, of course, plays right to the point I made after his initial comment (plays so much so, that I will repeat it):

[I]f Terry Moran thinks this “term of art” (AKA “lingo” or “insider-speak”) is too obscure for the typical viewer, then why did he use it? Isn’t his job to communicate and educate, rather than impress and/or confuse his audience?

Which brings me to the broader point: Terry Moran’s responsibilities as a television journalist, and, perhaps, my responsibilities as a blogger.

Mr. Moran begins his second comment with a second correction:

I wasn't at "the Texas Statehouse on an early November night back in the year 2000." I was at the War Memorial Plaza in Nashville, Tennessee, covering the Gore campaign--an assignment I had been doing for ABC News for more than a year.

And, for a second time, I stand corrected. I was wrong, Moran was covering Gore’s campaign in 2000, and was in Tennessee, not Texas. I am actually a bit embarrassed about this. I pride myself on my memory, and I hate that the events of election night 2000 have now, six-and-a-half years later, run together in my mind. I am actually curious as to what made my brain form an image of Terry in front of the Austin statehouse.

(I will add, not so much in my defense but as a note of interest, that it is not actually that easy to find via web searches just who covered which campaigns back in 2000. The ABC News site has no obvious link back to that coverage, and a search of the site with terms like “Bush campaign 2000” and “Texas” and “November” yields 18 pages of results, but none prior to 2006. After about forty minutes of googling, I stumbled upon transcripts of programs stored at the Vanderbilt Television News Archive—a fascinating resource—and from them I feel like I can conclude that the ABC Bush correspondent was Dean Reynolds—but I could be completely wrong, too.)

Alas, again, my mistake gives Mr. Moran an opportunity to avoid a broader point, but, since I do not possess, it seems, a perfect memory, nor the videotape of ABC’s broadcast from 11/7 – 11/8/2000, I will have to let this one go.

Next up for Moran, in his second comment, is his issue with my critique of his Gore interview:

Far from "ignoring the content of Al Gore's book," I covered it at length in the Nightline piece.

Terry then pastes a lengthy excerpt—“the relevant section from [his] script.” It is long to be block-quoting, but I want to make sure Mr. Moran is fully heard here:

"To Gore, the Bush administration is a prime example of what he says is all wrong in American politics--an emphasis on fear and faith over logic and reason.

"But he stops short of agreeing with Jimmy Carter recent declaration."

MORAN: "WOULD YOU AGREE WITH PRESIDENT CARTER THAT THIS IS THE WORST ADMINISTRATION IN OUR HISTORY?"

GORE: "WELL, YOU KNOW, I'VE RECENTLY BEGUN TO FEAR THAT I'VE BEEN LOSING MY OBJECTIVITY ON BUSH AND CHENEY, SO I'M NOT YOUR BEST WITNESS ON -- YOU KNOW, I DIDN'T VOTE FOR THEM. LET ME PUT IT THAT WAY."

MORAN: "IS THAT A YES OR A NO?"

GORE: "WELL, I -- THEY WERE NOT MY CHOICE FOR OFFICE, BUT, LOOK, THAT'S NOT..."

MORAN: "I'M CURIOUS."

GORE: "BUT I'M NOT OBJECTIVE ON THEM AND -- I HAVE THE DEEPEST RESPECT FOR PRESIDENT CARTER, BUT I'M NOT THE BEST JUDGE OF -- I DIDN'T VOTE FOR THEM. YOU KNOW, I WOULD RATHER SOMEBODY ELSE DO THAT."

"What Gore says he would rather do right now is help fix the American democracy, which he says is broken--facts are ignored, debate is twisted in an 'Assault on Reason.'"

EXCERPTS FROM POLITICAL ADS, INCLUDING ANTI-FORD AD IN TN: "I MET HAROLD AT THE PLAYBOY CLUB."

"It begins with television, Gore claims--a medium he says is prone to fearmongering and emotional appeals, and far less able than newspapers and other print media to sustain reasoned, logical debate.

"And today, he says, powerful interests are able to manipulate fear and emotion through television so thoroughly that democracy itself is damaged."

GORE: "THE WAY WE CONDUCT THE CONVERSATION OF DEMOCRACY HAS CHANGED RADICALLY. IT'S MUCH MORE OF A ONE-WAY CONVERSATION NOW BETWEEN THOSE WHO ARE IN THE PRIVILEGED POSITIONS TO COMMAND THE AIRWAYS, AND THE REST OF US, FOR THE MOST PART, ARE WATCHING AND FIND IT VERY DIFFICULT IN THIS COMMUNICATIONS ENVIRONMENT FOR INDIVIDUALS TO PLAY A MEANINGFUL ROLE."

V/O: Bush and Rove together

"The Bush administration--Gore believes--has simply taken the current system to an extreme--an opinion that isn't surprising coming from the Democrat who lost to Bush in 2000."

MORAN: "NOW WHAT IF A REPUBLICAN, LOYAL REPUBLICAN, WERE TO READ THIS BOOK AND SAY, "WHAT AL GORE IS REALLY SAYING IS THAT IN 1992 AND 1996, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ACTED WITH REASON AND THEY WERE SMART AND THEY ELECTED BILL CLINTON AND AL GORE, AND THEN THEY WERE MANIPULATED BY POWER-MAD ZEALOTS AND THEY MADE THE WRONG CHOICE?"

GORE: "WELL, OF COURSE, THAT'S NOT WHAT THE BOOK SAYS AT ALL, AND I SPECIFICALLY CITE EXAMPLES WHEN -- DURING THE CLINTON-GORE ADMINISTRATION WHERE THESE SAME TRENDS WERE BEGINNING TO PICK UP STRENGTH. I THINK THAT IT'S BEEN A GROWING PROBLEM."

I must thank Mr. Moran for this, because without it I really wouldn’t feel as confident in saying that not only does this “relevant section” prove my point—the Nightline piece had very little to do with Gore’s book except to inadvertently prove its thesis—it is a terrible interview! To quote one reader that sent an e-mail after reading Moran’s comment:

It looks like he could have culled most of the excerpt he pasted from the jacket flap of the book--it's like a lazy child's book report--and the only question he "asked" Gore about the book was questioning Gore's thesis based on the fact that he belongs to a party. The first question wasn't even about the book! And, it was just baiting, given the manufactured controversy around Carter's statement.

I really couldn’t have said it better myself. I know, because I tried last Tuesday when I originally critiqued the interview. Rather than refute my contentions that his interview tries to provoke a tabloid headline and searches for sensation over substance, Moran’s reply sets in electronic type a perfect confirmation.

I have not read The Assault on Reason, I will tell you that straight away, but I have now read, seen, or heard at least half-a-dozen interviews with Gore, along with a couple of reviews of his book, and I feel pretty safe in saying that the book does not address President Jimmy Carter’s recent comments about George W. Bush’s administration (being that Gore’s book was already printed when Carter made his comments). I also doubt that Carter cleared his comments with Gore, and I doubt that Gore conferred with Carter before his book tour—so why does Moran feel that grilling Gore once, twice, three times about Carter’s comment is proof that the interview was about The Assault on Reason?

And then, after Terry—not Al—summarizes Gore’s thesis, Moran sets to immediately (and you don’t have to believe me—because there it is in the transcript that Terry provided) undermine the book by using the now all-too-familiar tactic of attacking the messenger (along with using the cowardly “some people say” construction).

MORAN: "NOW WHAT IF A REPUBLICAN, LOYAL REPUBLICAN, WERE TO READ THIS BOOK AND SAY, "WHAT AL GORE IS REALLY SAYING IS THAT IN 1992 AND 1996, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ACTED WITH REASON AND THEY WERE SMART AND THEY ELECTED BILL CLINTON AND AL GORE, AND THEN THEY WERE MANIPULATED BY POWER-MAD ZEALOTS AND THEY MADE THE WRONG CHOICE?"

Get it? First, Moran is not saying this, he’s just supposin’ somebody else might, but second, by contrast, Terry is more than implying that Gore’s point is a partisan one—and, so, one unworthy of much more consideration.

Gore objects, but the discussion, for the purposes of this edition of Nightline, is over. In the end, we are left with: “Gore refuses to admit he agrees with Carter,” “Gore’s book is probably partisan, certainly more of the same politics as usual,” and, though Moran does not provide this part in his selective selection, “Will Al run?”

The Nightline promos for the Gore show promised “fireworks,” and Moran, his producers, and editors tried to manufacture some. One would think that the subject of Gore’s book would be incendiary enough—but I’m not going to put words in the Vice President’s mouth. Here, from a note he posted on Amazon.com, is what Gore has to say:

[F]ear has become a more powerful political tool than trust, public consumption of entertainment has dramatically surpassed that of serious news, and blind faith has proven more potent than truth.

We are at a pivotal moment in American democracy. The persistent and sustained reliance on falsehoods as the basis of policy, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, has reached levels that were previously unimaginable. It's too easy and too partisan to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes.

Reasoned, focused discourse is vital to our democracy to ensure a well-informed citizenry. But this is difficult in an environment in which we are experiencing a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time--from the O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson trials to Paris Hilton and Anna Nicole Smith.

Is that ‘nuff said, or would now be a good time to point out that Terry Moran came to national prominence in the early ‘90’s as anchor of Court TV’s coverage of the murder trials of the Menendez brothers and O.J. Simpson?

But back to me—Moran’s third point in his most recent comment reads thusly:

Gore's 17 percent of "leaned Democrats" in the ABC News poll I cited put him in third place in a crowded field, behind Clinton and Obama and ahead of Edwards. In politics, a non-candidate pulling that kind of number is significant.

Well. . . maybe, and maybe not. Perhaps this goes to a larger point I have made in the past about how both television and print journalists cover polling, but the fact is, based on Terry’s “term of art”—and even with the additional information Terry has since provided in his second comment published here—we cannot asses how significant this number really is (and I mean this in both the technical and popular senses of “significant”). It would have been cool if Moran could have provided a link to the full results of the poll, but without that, I can only guess at how to analyze that number 17.

Does Gore’s “leaned” 17 come in third behind first blush/volunteered answers supporting the other candidates, or is this a tally of all leaners? How many points did the other top-tier candidates register? Are the point differentials statistically significant? How many were polled? How many of those polled expressed no preference until they were leaned upon? What did Gore poll without leaners?

Those are only some of the questions I have. And, while I would like to say it is interesting to compare Gore’s 17% of “leaned Democrats” with Fred Thompson’s 9% of “leaned Republicans,” I can’t. Without more information, without access to raw data (or, at least, rawer data), I, and any other news consumer, for that matter, can’t do anything with those numbers but draw rash, baseless, and meaningless conclusions.

And that is to say nothing about how little even a better fleshed-out ranking would reveal. Telling us that people prefer Hillary, Barak, Al, and/or John more or less than the others does little to explain why—it is not about their positions on the issues, it is just about their positions in a poll. It is about the horserace, not the horses.

Which all sounds an awful lot like the kind of thing Al Gore is railing against.

So far, so good, I think. All of this, all of the back and forth, the exchange of ideas, the documentation of facts, is good for the information stream. It adds to the public record and encourages dialogue and thought—and I’m all for it. I’ll make a point, correct me if I make a mistake, defend your point, and I will defend mine.

But that’s not where Terry Moran leaves things—even as he leaves. Again showing his affinity for those famed horsemen of the Iranian Plateau, Moran finishes his comment this way:

In my business, when someone repeatedly gets basic, checkable facts wrong, they lose all credibility.

So, farewell.

Yeah. Well, news flash, Terry: I’m not in your business! You are officially a journalist—that is your paid vocation. I am blogger by avocation. You likely pull down a six-figure salary for your work. I do what I do here for free—I don’t even run blog ads for the few pennies it might send my way. I don’t have a staff, I don’t have a fact-checker, I don’t have a LexisNexis account, or any of the other resources afforded an employee of a multi-million-dollar, multinational news and entertainment conglomerate. All I have is a TV, a five-year-old computer, an internet connection, my two hands, and a love of (as mentioned way up top) politics, popular culture, and the occasional mixed drink.

So, to recap: Nightline, guy2k—not the same thing.

That said, I like to think I have standards. I like to think that I care about getting it “right”—so, when someone writes in with a correction, I happily, and with humility, post it. That is how, I think, blogs should work. Because they are about immediacy and, to a greater extent, opinion, blogs are more dependant on the give and take of electronic dialogue and the evolving information stream. I like to be right, or, at least, in the right, and I try hard to be so, but I expect on occasion to be wrong. When I am, and someone can show me how, I will post a correction, and, if necessary, an apology.

I would think that you, Terry, might know that.

For those less immersed in all of this, perhaps I should now direct readers to Pushback, Terry Moran’s own attempt at a blog—one that seems to have died on the vine six weeks ago.

There is much to explore in the less than four months of posts that make up the entirety of Moran’s foray into blogging, but let me start with this entry from mid February. In a post titled “I Stand Corrected,” Terry acknowledges his “significant factual errors” made three days prior when he asserted that “Republicans had never nominated a candidate for national office,” that Spiro Agnew was the only ethnic American to run on a national Republican ticket, and that John Kerry was an Irish-American/Irish Catholic.

None of those assertions turned out to be true, readers of Pushback wrote in with corrections, and Moran posted those corrections with “sincere thanks” and apologies for his “sloppiness.” Moran then went on to defend the broader point he had wanted to make in his original post.

That sounds great to me. Terry’s behavior was responsible and appropriate in this case, and, as best I can tell, no one responded to his correction by telling him he had lost “all credibility” and/or wishing him “farewell.”

But that’s an example of what happens in the blogosphere—what about when someone repeatedly gets it wrong in what Moran refers to as his “business”?

Someone like Terry Moran.

This has already become one the longest posts I’ve ever written, so I will only mention a few recent examples, but let me say that it is not hard to find instances where Moran’s on-air pronouncements are contradicted by the facts—“basic, checkable” facts.

For example, back in March, Moran followed Senator John (asshole) McCain as he stumped for support in New Hampshire. During the hagiography, Terry makes repeated assertions about McCain’s positions and his character while ignoring the volumes of evidence (and hours of videotape) to the contrary. There is an exhaustive rundown of the contradictions, errors, and friendly spin over at Media Matters, but let me try to summarize:

Moran asserts that McCain takes “all comers on all questions” playing it “as straight as possible” with a “directness that still startles.” Moran ignores McCain’s recent stumbles on contraception and HIV, and his refusal to answer questions about his stand on homosexuality.

Moran states that McCain has been “unyielding” in his position on Iraq, and adds “McCain backed the war from the start, has called for sending more troops to Iraq ever since, and strongly supports Bush's surge of troops to Baghdad now.”

That assertion leads into a clip of Sen. McCain saying,

. . . there's a little irony that I was the greatest critic of the way the war was mismanaged. But life isn't fair.

Moran then adds, “That's pure John McCain. Blunt, unyielding, deploying his principles as political weapons.”

Media Matters notes—as many including myself have, as well—that John McCain has been nothing if not wildly inconsistent in his proclamations about the war:

While McCain has assailed the White House's execution of the war, he has also asserted that the United States is on "the right course" in Iraq, said that President Bush "has a good team around him" on national security issues, and, as recently as August 2006, expressed his confidence in Bush's ability to "lead the war."

But Moran introduces none of that into the piece, nor does he really confront McCain with any of these contradictions about the war. Instead, Terry not only takes the Senator at his word, he reinforces and deifies him:

Only a truly confident or cagey politician would invite voters to think less of him. But McCain has branded himself as a man whose personal experience of war, shot down in Vietnam 40 years ago, held prisoner and tortured for five years, equips him now to face anything life can throw at him.

The maverick candidate still. John McCain.

That is wrong on its face, and so very wrong under the skin. Terry fails to present McCain or the viewers with basic, checkable facts that contradict McCain’s claims—but he goes even further, time and again suppressing independent doubt with his own interpretation or reinterpretation of what his subject has said.

Another example, a Nightline piece from late October, just before the midterm elections. Here, Moran, referring to political attack ads, claims, “both sides are playing a serious game of hardball,” with “mudslinging” and “hitting below the belt.” Terry asks, “How low can they go?”

Problem was, both sides weren’t slinging the same level of mud. Nightline ran a clip of the anti-Harold Ford ad from the Tennessee Senate race (the same one that Moran references in the recent Gore interview), but could not come up with anything equivalent from the Democrats. At all. From anywhere.

That was, as best I could find, then and now, because there was nothing equivalent. If there were, I would think that Nightline would have used it. If there was no evidence of anything that muddy from the Democrats, then it just can’t be truthfully said that “both sides” were involved.

Then there was the case I wrote about last year when Nightline regurgitated repackaged the Brit Hume/FOX News interview with Dead Eye Dick Cheney after he shot his pal on a Texas ranch. There, Moran again reinterprets for us, calling a freakishly deadpan Vice President “clearly emotional.” Calling on Republican heavy Ed Rollins to reinforce his assessment, Moran never asks a Democrat for an evaluation of the situation, nor does he report any of the actual news (you know, facts) about the shooting that had emerged that same day.

It is in the light of these—and so many more—unchecked and uncorrected errors that I have to take particular umbrage at Moran’s assessment of my credibility, and it is in light of all of his editorial choices and slanted summations that I have to question his.

However, since Terry has bid me “farewell,” I suppose he doesn’t much care what I think.

But let’s give Terry something he doesn’t offer in return—the benefit of the doubt. I don’t really see it this way, and he never says anything in his comments to contradict my persistent perceptions about his bias, but perhaps Moran is not reporting from the right—perhaps he is just doing what he has to do to keep his big TV job, or to maintain what he perceives as vital access to the powers that be. If that is true, then that is a shame, for his reportage is not well served by his survival instincts.

So, is it then his survival instincts that explain some of his off-air behavior?

As I previously noted, Terry tried his hand at blogging for a brief stretch. And in that brief stretch, Moran wrote posts with titles like: “Why is Hollywood So Liberal?” in which he asserts:

A conservative Democrat or a Republican is simply not going to find anywhere near as much money out here as a liberal--a "real" liberal.

Beyond my serious questions about whether I or many others would call Hollywood darling Hillary Clinton a “’real’ liberal,” I have two words for Terry: Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And then there is the already much commented upon post: “Does John Edwards Condone Hate Speech?” There, Moran extrapolates on the dustup over the writings of Pandagon blogger Amanda Marcotte (from a time prior to when she was hired by Edwards) to ask a series of “rhetorical” questions in the same vein as the headline.

What, if anything, does it tell us about Edwards that he's joined up with this blogger? Is Edwards' association with a person who has written these things a legitimate issue for voters, as they wonder -- among other things -- whom he might appoint to high office if he's elected? If a Republican candidate teamed up with a right-wing blogger who spewed this kind of venom, how would people react?

Of course, posing everything as a question is a cheap trick—not unlike a trial attorney saying something clearly open to objection, only to withdraw the statement or question after opposing counsel objects—it puts it out there, but disavows any real connection to the insinuation. That wouldn’t be a way of providing cover for partisan opinions, would it?

However, even if we take the questions at face value, Moran chooses to ignore the answer. As many have observed throughout the blogosphere and in the New York Times, Moran’s “maverick” John McCain has relationships with bloggers that McCain himself says have stepped “over the line.”

But let’s not leave it with McCain—it would be unfair to only tar politicians with their favorite bloggers when there are members of the establishment media that also have a blogger problem. Quoting a 2005 interview of Terry Moran conducted by right wing radio host Hugh Hewitt, Glenn Greenwald reveals:

Hewitt also asked Moran if he reads blogs, and Moran immediately declared: "I always start out at Instapundit." I bet he does. Next came: "I take a look at LGF." He then tacked on Daily Kos and Josh Marshall as blogs he "looks at," and then proudly added: "My brother has a blog, Right Wing Nut House."

For the uninitiated, Instapundit and Little Green Footballs (LGF) are two of the leading blogs on the right and are frequently filled with assertions and comments that more than cross the line and could easily be defined as “hate speech.” (No, I won’t link to it—they don’t need the hits.) They are also blogs that famously suck at posting corrections or retractions.

Moran doesn’t disavow his interest in these blogs, and he promotes his brother’s right wing blog, as well (though in comments on Pushback, Moran does say he often disagrees with his brother, he obviously feels it favorable to associate with him when talking to Hewitt). Does Terry Moran Condone Hate Speech?

I actually don’t think that Moran does—but you see how that works. And, perhaps, you also see how Terry works from other parts of his interview with Hugh Hewitt. Here’s one exchange (again, via Greenwald):

HH: My brother called me a journalist once during a conversation about this blog. I was offended. That is a general impression among the American military about the media, Terry. Where does that come from?

TM: It comes from, I think, a huge gulf of misunderstanding, for which I lay plenty of blame on the media itself. There is, Hugh, I agree with you, a deep anti-military bias in the media. One that begins from the premise that the military must be lying, and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong. I think that that is a hangover from Vietnam, and I think it's very dangerous.

It is, of course, bad enough that Moran sells out his brethren in exchange for Hewitt’s approval, but I can’t help but add that, yet again, Moran gets it wrong. As Greenwald can’t help but throw in:

Moran's depiction of his own profession as "deep[ly] anti-military" and reflexively opposed to American military force is so persuasive. After all, if there is one lesson that we learned in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, it is that the American media is so very, very hostile to the military and reflexively opposed to all assertions of U.S. military force.

That was why they unquestioningly printed on their front pages and recited on their news broadcasts every single claim that emanated from the Pentagon, and it is also why they cheered on as loudly and enthusiastically as anyone else the President's glorious march to war. How eager must Moran be to win the Right's approval if -- in 2005 -- he could make the transparently ludicrous claim that his fellow journalists hate the military and hate the use of U.S. military force?

And then there is this revealing passage from the same interview:

HH: What's your guess about the percentage of the White House Press Corps that voted for Kerry?

TM: Oh, very high. Very, very high. . . .

HH: Who'd you vote for?

TM: Well, that's a secret ballot, isn't it?

HH: Well, it is. I'm just asking, though.

TM: I'd prefer not to answer that.

HH: I know you would, but...

TM: It might surprise you, but I'd prefer not to.

Holy phony coyness, Batman! Really, what is up with this? What is it about the likes of Moran and his former ABC bunkmate Mark Halperin that inspires them to go on a show like Hewitt’s, rat out their fellow journalists as (by their assessment) biased, and then hint hint, wink wink, nod nod about their own, more acceptable, rightward leanings?

Or, more importantly to this post, what is it about Moran’s behavior, his biases, and his mistakes that somehow allow him to keep or even enhance his credibility in his business, while my writings and actions as a blogger somehow cause me—in Terry’s eyes—to lose all of mine?

As always, I encourage and look forward to any and all answers to that question.

And, one final note, despite my “clever” title, I would rather end this post with an un-sarcastic “Why can’t we all just get along?”

I continue to be extremely perplexed by the need of a good swath of the establishment media to dismiss and disparage the blogosphere. I have a deep and abiding respect for the good work done by many, many professional journalists, and freely acknowledge when I reference their reportage.

I also have great admiration for the work done by many bloggers—many of whom do original reporting and/or original analysis themselves. I don’t claim everything from the blogosphere is pure information gold, and I like to think that I apply the same level of informed skepticism when I read either a blog or a newspaper, but there is clearly much to be learned from both spheres. As bloggers sometimes build on the work of traditional journalists, journalist should be open to building on and acknowledging good work done by bloggers.

That way, we can all fight the assault on reason. . . instead of one-another.

Till we meet again. . . .