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-- WASHINGTON — In blogs we don't trust.
This is, no doubt, a surprise to those who have proclaimed over the past year or two that the "old'' media (that's "old media scum,'' in the parlance of some right-wing bloggers) are fading dinosaurs being hastened into extinction by a newer, quicker and more freewheeling source of information that is more democratic and somehow less biased than the traditional press.
The blog fetish may have reached its height during Rathergate, the imbroglio over the airing in September 2004 of a "60 Minutes II" story purporting to show that President Bush got preferential treatment when he landed a coveted spot in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.
The trashing of CBS News anchorman Dan Rather and his subsequent hasty retirement were seen as the ultimate triumph of the bloggers, predominantly on the political right, who gleefully proclaimed that the documents "60 Minutes II" relied upon for the special-treatment allegation were forged.
In truth, an exhaustive investigation led by former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, a Republican, and former Associated Press president Lou Boccardi found that no definitive conclusion could be reached about whether the documents were authentic or not.
But never mind. The power of the blogs was confirmed, a development that stunned the mainstream press and impressed the political left — which of course decided that it, too, had to embrace the blogs or be undone by them. The "blogosphere,'' liberal doyenne Arianna Huffington (and star of her very own blog) wrote last week in the British newspaper the Guardian, "is now the most vital news source in America.''
Really? --
