Saturday, February 12, 2005

The Left-Right Blogger Wars.

The Corsair long ago lost track of who'se winning this titanic struggle in the blogosphere after Rathergate. This week, however, the fighting was particularly sanguinary, with reported casualties being suffered on both sides. On the right, lefty bloggers took out Jeff Guckert, RIP, conservative White House reporter, of whom James Wolcott blogs:

"It was inane watching Wolf Blitzer and Howie Kurtz take out their snuff boxes yesterday to pooh-pooh tsk-tsk the prurient zeal of lefty bloggers in pursuing this case, as if 'Man Nips' Gannon/Guckert were just some vocal conservative with iffy credentials whose personal life had been pried open like a bad clam. That this imposter was able to attend White House briefings under an alias and lob softballs to the president while other reporters got blanked is worthy of investigation, yes? "

Perhaps, 'man nips' notwithstanding. And on the left, Conservative blogs brought low left-of-center Eason Jordan of CNN. The National Review stands triumphant. According to Nationalledger.com:

"CNN's chief news executive Eason Jordan resigned late Friday night. He touched off a firestorm of criticism from the new media for remarks asserting that he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by US troops in Iraq, but claimed that they in fact had been targeted. He made the accusations at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It was quickly posted by Rony Abovitz on Forum Blog.Org and the new media workhorses took over.

"Old media seemed to circle the wagons on this one for nearly two weeks. It was embarrassing. In fact, some are giving their first reports tonight on the matter as they explain to their news consumer that CNN's chief executive has resigned from a controversy that they've never even mentioned in any news report. Washington Post writer Howard Kurtz (also employed by CNN) did a whitewash story chalked full of deflections on Tuesday of this week. It failed to slow down the criticism, in fact it was such a poor and incomplete accounting, it likely intensified the outrage as it appeared that Kurtz was running nothing more than damage control for his CNN boss.

"It will be difficult to ever take Howard Kurtz seriously again."

Oh dear, pity Howie Kurtz, who takes a beating from both left and right sides of the blogosphere. He's going to need one hell of a fancydance to keep out of both their crosshairs, right and left.

Stay tuned.

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