IS THE TIMES TRYING TO MAKE BLOGS LOOK BAD? Yesterday I linked to a Wall Street Journal piece asking:

Is it just me, or does the whole mainstream-media-generated controversy over blogs savor of an attempt to score a hit against blogs out of pique and envy? . . . Would it be unrealistic to see the gleeful reporting on the fallibility of the blogs as a feeble and rather clueless attempt to dent their credibility — in effect, to say, you’d better leave it to the pros next time? Of course, virtually all the mainstream media (MSM) cheerfully jumped on the supposed Kerry victory bandwagon, leading, as blogger Mickey Kaus put it, to the “Seven-Hour Presidency of JFK.” But then the MSM have never been too good at self-analysis.

Now some people are suggesting that this NYT article, which is admittedly a bit hard on Kos and others, is an example of that phenomenon. I’d have to give it mixed marks though. First, to its credit, it debunks the election-fraud conspiracy theories. (“‘We know this was an emotional election, and the losing side is very upset,’ said Daniel Hoffheimer, the lead lawyer for the Kerry campaign in Ohio. But, he said, ‘I have not seen anything to indicate intentional fraud or tampering.'”) Second, it makes this point:

But while the widely read universe of Web logs was often blamed for the swift propagation of faulty analyses, the blogosphere, as it has come to be known, spread the rumors so fast that experts were soon able to debunk them, rather than allowing them to linger and feed conspiracy theories. Within days of the first rumors of a stolen election, in fact, the most popular theories were being proved wrong – though many were still reluctant to let them go.

It’s Mickey Kaus’s asymptotic approach to the truth. (On the other hand, though the article doesn’t mention it, semi-mainstream guys, like Keith Olbermann, have been in many ways no more skeptical than the blogosphere.)

Of course, it would have been fairer to the blogosphere had the Times noted that some blogs — like, ahem, this one — were appropriately skeptical of both the early exit polls and the post-election fraud/conspiracy theories.

UPDATE: Bryan Preston is less charitable, and thinks that the Times is trying to use lefty blogs to discredit the entire blogosphere: “The legacy media empire, burned by a couple of years of legitimate blogger triumphalism over catching the media in various forms of bias and hackery, will use the election conspiracy theories and the exit poll fiasco to strike back at the rebels. . . . Watch for more of this bloggers-can’t-be-trusted reporting.”

UPDATE: Reader John MacDonald thinks that Preston is right here, and adds: “CBS will go on the offensive, instead of answering questions: Wait for them to do hard hitting analysis of the blogosphere in order to diminish its credibility. . . . Riding out the storm isn’t going to cut it because their integrity is shot to hell by doing nothing.” I think it’s pretty well shot regardless.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails:

On Hardball tonight it was transparently obvious Chris Matthews has picked up on the meme to put bloggers down by criticizing the behaviour of left-wing bloggers solely (re conspiracy theories regarding the election) without mentioning it is left-wing bloggers’ behaviour they are talking about. Susan Molinari also chimed in strongly on the same theme, though in her case she just seems ignorant of blogs and bloggers altogether.

I predict that this strategy will work as well as their ceaseless flacking for Kerry did.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: More — including lots of links — here.