We have seen the enemy and it is Eric Alterman. I’m a great fan of Glen Reynolds and his primary site: Instapundit. He’s a fairly conservative blogger (more libertarian than republican) but he gets around and reads liberal as well as conservative sites. Most he has a measured amount of respect for to go along with general disagreement. That does not seem to be the case for Mr. Alterman.
Mr. Alterman has a blog hosted by MSNBC and has made several appearances on the talk shows representing the liberal viewpoint. Apparently a couple of days ago, he was on a show with Jeff Jarvis, a more conservative blogger. The two of them had a polite catfight as we might expect but the thing that really seemed to burrow under the skin of Mr. Jarvis and others is Mr. Alterman’s continued allegations that blogs written by Iraqis that support the American presence and elections are actually being run by CIA operatives.
This was something that popped up a couple of weeks ago in a style section column written by a NY Times reporter, Sarah Boxer, on the blog Iraq the Model. Most of the outrage seems to stem from two sources: general irritation that maybe some Iraqis actually believe that we are doing good things over there and its not all the chaos that its portrayed to be, and that pushing rumors that these men are CIA agents could make them targets of insurgents and get them killed. Another aspect that seemed to get the dander up of the blogosphere is the casualness of talking about these men in comparison to the flak that went up when the name of a CIA employee wife of government diplomat was exposed during the yellow cake investigations last year. The comparison they made was that if these bloggers are CIA agents, then the NY Times and Mr. Alterman are exposing them with the same disregard that they accused the Bush administration of doing. If the bloggers are not CIA agents, then the NY Times and Mr. Alterman are pushing a story that is not true and challenges their credibility in journalism. Either way, it’s being seen as a gross irresponsibility.
Mrs. X and I routinely make fun of Fox News for its "unbiased newscoverage" but that doesn't stop me from recognizing that there are a lot of problems for members of the other side of the aisle and other outlets of the mainstream media. This, of course, is why I read the blogs that I do. Maybe sometime soon we can all agree that there is no such thing as impartial news and just have everyone pick their flavor of choice.
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