The Guardian has an interesting story about how the press in America have become lapdogs to the Bush administration. It spends quite a bit of ink on how compliant reporters have become and how reluctant they are to criticize the White House. Toward the end, the article explores one possible reason: the relentless discipline of the White House in its drive to control the news. They give biscuits to the lapdogs and sticks to the few critics. At the very end, it has the following interesting bit about weblogs:
Lott, the veteran senator from Mississippi, made his pro-segregation statement on a Thursday, in full earshot of the Washington press corps. The Times and Post both failed to mention it. Indeed, it was almost totally ignored until the following Tuesday, kept alive until then only by a handful of bloggers. If there is a Watergate scandal lurking in this administration, it is unlikely to be Woodward or his colleagues who will tell us about it. If it emerges, it will probably come out on the web. That is a devastating indictment of the state of American newspapers.
Indeed.
Posted at 11:28 PM
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