Monday,
March 14 2005
BEWARE THE MESSENGER: Via Powerline
I noticed this
story in the tech section of today's New York Times featuring
liberal bloggers' attempts to promote their stories to the mainstream
media through weekly conference calls. The public relations effort
is being organized by a guy named Bob Fertik:
"We
hope to build a bridge," Mr. Fertik said, adding that different
bloggers would be invited to share their reporting on each call.
"We hope that good credible stories that are broken on
the Internet find their way into coverage in the mainstream
media."
So who is
Bob Fertik? He's a self-described
"life-long progressive and Democratic Party activist"
and co-founder of the web site Democrats.com.
The only reason I recognized Fertik's name is because he was a
behind-the-scenes player in reviving the Bush Texas Air National
Guard story in early 2004 - which I wrote about here.
At that time,
which was obviously prior to the current design of Fertik's web
site, Democrats.com contained such interesting and useful pages
as "Bush-Nazi
Links", "Bush
Hatred" and this
page calling for the impeachment of George Bush, Dick Cheney
and five members of the U.S. Supreme Court which states that "George
W. Bush and Dick Cheney have illegally occupied the White House
since January 20, 2001."
In other
words, Fertik is a long-time dweller in the furthest nether regions
of the lefty fever swamp. And far from wanting to promote "good
credible stories" to the mainstream, Fertik revealed his
intentions by telling The Times:
"The
way we perceive it," he said, "is that right-wing
bloggers are able to invent stories, get them out on
Drudge, get them on Rush Limbaugh, get them on Fox, and pretty
soon that spills over into the mainstream media. We, the progressives,
we don't have that kind of network to work with."
The problem
with this, of course, is that conservative bloggers haven't "invented"
anything, any more so than Josh Marshall & Co. "invented"
a story about Trent Lott.
Still, from
Fertik's far-left perspective he sees a conservative pipeline
that pumps bogus stories from the blogosphere into the public
consciousness through Rush Limbaugh and Fox. Fertik wants his
own pipeline to push bogus stories, and he's hoping the members
of the mainstream media will oblige. Here's hoping they won't.
DEAR
JOHN: John Brummett to John Kerry: "It's
not your party." In other words, you can go away now.
THE
KURDISH CONUNDRUM: This morning Edward
Wong examines the complexities of establishing a Kurd-Shia
alliance in Iraq.
Meanwhile,
an anxious Turkey watches and waits. For more on how the deal
is shaping up in the eyes of the Turks, see Yusuf
Kanli in the Turkish Daily News and Murat
Somer in the Daily Star.
PRAISE
FOR TED: I rip on Ted Kennedy from time to time, mostly
because I think he's well deserving. So it's only fair to give
him credit when he
does something right. - T. Bevan 9:32 am Link
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