The mainstream media used to be able to determine who was to be believed. People who couldn’t get a hearing from them were deemed not quite respectable. But it doesn’t work as well in the Age of Blogs.
There’s a terrific interview in The American Enterprise with John O’Neill of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in which he details how the MSM tried to prevent his group from getting a hearing.
“TAE: How do you explain the media’s response [to their claims that John Kerry was unfit for command]?
“O’NEILL: The establishment media was very pro-Kerry. They were opposed to any story that was critical of Kerry, and I believe that they were captured by their own bias. We met with one reporter around that time. We told a story to him relating to Kerry’s service. He acknowledged it was true and terribly important. And he told us he would not print it because it would help George Bush. That’s when we began to realize we had a real problem on our hands.”
Do you realize that sans blogs the establishment media would most likely have succeeded in drowning out the message of the SBVFT?