Blogger Gets Burned

It happens. You stumble upon a juicy bit of information that can’t be confirmed. You want to post it but hesitate. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. You blog it anyway, and it turns out to be wrong.

It happens to journalists, especially journalists who hate George Bush. CBS producers could not authenticate memos they said proved Bush received preferential treatment in the Texas Air National Guard. On top of that, their star witness had been caught lying to them. But they still ran with the story. Journalists were recently duped again. Back on March 20, the Washington Post made reference to “a memo distributed only to Republican senators” regarding Terri Schiavo. No one can verify where the memo came from or whether it’s authentic, but for days afterward MSM wrote about it as if it were genuine.

I wrote about the whole mess on Saturday, citing Joshua Claybourn’s efforts. Well, it turns out Joshua was duped, too. I wrote that he talked to “Senate staffers who claim that an aide to Democratic senator Harry Reid distributed to memo.” He even named the Reid staffer in his post. Joshua has retracted the post because he’s been unable to confirm the accusations, and the Senate staffers are “nowhere to be found.”

What most of us didn’t know was that the so-called staffers didn’t tell Joshua their names. Not even alias, I presume. He writes:

I’m disturbed and upset, both with those who anonymously made the accusation and myself for posting it without more judicious restraint. Inevitably someone will accuse me of hypocrisy and that’s a fair criticism. But I have retracted the sloppy reporting on my part and am willing to note the errors; that is much more than ABC or the Washington Post can say.

When things like this happen, editors are invaluable. Journalists have that advantage over bloggers. If a reporter gets wind of hot story, he has to confirm sources before the story goes to press. Sometimes the editors goof as well, but at that point the blame also falls on the editor, too. Misery (in being duped by anonymous sources) loves company.

Michelle Malkin, journalist and blogger, knows both worlds, and she offers Joshua some advice:

For obvious reasons, claims made by a completely anonymous source must be regarded as far less reliable than those made by a source who is willing to disclose his or her identity to a reporter or blogger.

I often use sources who don’t want their names published, but I never publish information provided by anonymous tipsters unless I can independently verify the information.

Claybourn was careless. He had better hope that the Reid aide he accused of wrongdoing doesn’t sue him for libel.

That’s what it all comes down to. If bloggers want to be journalists, we should strive to be better than journalists. Joshua retracted, but the so-called journalists have not.

Addendum: Michelle has been all over media critic Howard Kurtz for not doing his job: criticizing the media. He finally bites (reg. req.). Michelle also does an excellent job calling out so-called journalists who have not retracted their stories about the “GOP memo.”

Ed Morrissey: “Kurtz once again acts as an apologist rather than an objective news critic, yet another disappointment he can add to his non-coverage of the Eason Jordan scandal.”

Update (2:26 p.m.): I just read Howard Kurtz’s column in its entirety. I have three words for the journalists who first reported on the so-called GOP Talking Points Memo: Sloppy, sloppy and sloppy!