Harley at Tacitus points to this little item from Editor & Publisher, which in turn reports on a story about to appear in Time.
Rememeber the right-bloggic foofaraw about the fact that the soldier’s question about armor for vehicles in Iraq — the one to which Rumsfeld gave so witless and heartless a response — had been planted by a reporter?
Well, guess what? It wasn’t, according to the soldier who asked it. In fact, he showed the draft of the question to the reporter, an “embed” he knew well, and the reporter’s only suggestion was to tone it down.
I agree with the principle that bloggers have no particular obligation to cover things. It’s fair to use selectivity, and especially selective outrage, as an index of bias, but there’s no ethical obligation for a blogger to be unbiased.
However, when someone has mentioned a story, especially an explosive one such as this, there is, I think, an absolute obligation to report on the debunking. Drudge, of course, is the lowest form of animal life, and never retracts. But how about the rest of you, fellas? Come on, you know who you are.
[Of course, this takes nothing away from Roger Ailes’s point that the important thing wasn’t who wrote the question but why Rummy gave such a dimwit answer.]