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16 Jun 2008 04:30 pm

Journalists Or Bloggers?

Greenwald vents:

"One of the most frequent criticisms which self-proclaimed journalists voice about bloggers is that journalists (but not bloggers) engage in "real reporting" -- by which they mean that they speak to government officials and then faithfully write down what they say and then include those quotes in the things they write, and often shape what they write based on those quotes. But that's exactly the process that transforms journalists into handmaidens for government propaganda, that makes them fear a loss of access, and renders them dependent on maintaining relationships with the very people whom they're ostensibly scrutinizing."

The best reporters don't get coopted, but it is indeed very hard for even the best reporters not to get sucked into some kind of coziness with sources. The truth is: it's much more fruitful to realize that bloggers and reporters are complementary, not alternatives to one another. Someone needs to do the face-to-face or phone to phone reporting; and good reporting benefits from the kind of outsider scrutiny that Glenn provides. Both are valuable - and hard. But I thnk we learned from the run-up to the Iraq war that leaving everything to those of us in Washington is a mistake.

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