Several readers have pointed out a column by Antonia Zerbisias in the Toronto Star titled "The Pajamahadeens Are Digging Their Own Graves." Zerbisias finds us bloggers sorely wanting when compared to the stalwarts of the mainstream media:

The pajamahadeen are firing their virtual bullets into the cyber-air in celebration of CBS anchor Dan Rather's announcement on Tuesday that he was retiring as the top talking face of the network after 24 years.

The right-wing bloggers proudly dubbed themselves that — a play on muhajadeen, as in Muslim guerrilla fighters — when former CBS exec Jonathan Klein, in the wake of the scandal, complained to Fox News that "bloggers have no checks and balances. You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances (on network news) and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing."

By checks and balances, Klein meant the rigours of professional journalism — and not the opinionating of the blogosphere.

Ironically, bloggers mostly feed off the work of professional journalists who do the legwork. But, like parasites too stupid to realize they are killing off their hosts, the pajamahadeen don't get it every time they dig more dirt for our mass graves.

One thing is clear from [two] studies: The shift from mainstream media to alternate sources such as the ethnic press, cable networks and the Internet, are threatening the future of the solid, stolid mainstream journalism.

Got that? Mainstream journalism good, internet bad. Well, you could take that position. Let me know, though, when you hear about bloggers forging documents. Here is what's funny, though: just two weeks before the "pajamahadeen" column, in a column titled "Web Abuzz With Vote-Rigging Tales", Zerbisias was praising left-wing internet rumor-mongers for trying to get to the bottom of how the Republicans stole the 2004 election! Zerbisias wrote:

John Kerry may have conceded the White House to George W. Bush, but millions of Americans have not.

My inbox is engorged with some of their emails claiming that the election was hijacked. There are appeals to "bombard" the Ohio secretary of state over the provisional ballots, pleas for "emergency funds" to force state recounts plus entreaties for "first-hand'' anecdotes for a book on election irregularities.

But you wouldn't know anything was out of the ordinary from most of the mainstream media (MSM)... [T]here's practically nothing on the issue consuming my bandwidth and clogging my computer.

[T]hanks to a patchwork system of machine and paper ballots, a vast and confusing array of irregularities are turning up in many different counties. That means little coherence and much chaos, propelling wild rumours around the cyberspace, along with legitimate accounts of trouble.

But is that any reason to discount the story? What little MSM reporting there is of the irregularities is done with the intent of discrediting any potential case, however flimsy, against certifying the election results.

This brings us to MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, host of the best, although not best-rated, weeknight hour on U.S. cable. His Countdown With Keith Olbermann is a smart and snarky look at the day's events, with little of the spin you typically find on TV. [Ed.: Liberal spin isn't spin, it's just truth.]

Not surprising, then, that Olbermann has been almost a lone voice in the MSM's treatment of voting irregularities, earning him hero status in blogistan.

Which once again confirms how journalism is dead while stenography lives and thrives. Just like they did in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the media are not asking the questions they should be asking.

So "journalism is dead," and only the bloggers are digging for the real story. Except when "solid, stolid" mainstream journalists are busy forging documents; then, bloggers who expose the fraud are "stupid" "parasites" who engage in "opinionating." That's not a word, by the way.

I assume Zerbisias gets away with this kind of thing because no one reads her column.

UPDATE: Man, do we get jumped on fast in the blogosphere, or what? I originally referred to "Antonio" Zerbisias and "his" column. Within minutes, a dozen or so readers wrote to point that "Antonia" Zerbisias is a woman. I made the correction to avoid further confusion.

Posted by John at 04:10 PM  |    |  

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