{"id":1003,"date":"2007-07-02T07:26:48","date_gmt":"2007-07-02T13:26:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/index.php\/2007\/07\/02\/anonymous-sources-epilogue\/"},"modified":"2014-12-12T14:53:24","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T20:53:24","slug":"anonymous-sources-epilogue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1003","title":{"rendered":"Anonymous Sources – Epilogue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Someone asked me, in relation to my\u00a0series\u00a0 (Parts I<\/a>, II<\/a> and III<\/a>)\u00a0\u00a0on\u00a0the\u00a0Minnesota Monitor’s <\/em>sloppy attribution and possible apparent plagiarism\u00a0– “why are you pounding so hard on Jeff Fecke?”<\/p>\n

I’ll cite Michael Corleone; “It’s not personal.\u00a0 It’s business”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Oh, I’ll cop to having “creative differences” with Fecke; his non-Monitor <\/em>blogging<\/a> over the past few years has slid into a morass of Atrios-style snarking.\u00a0 It irritates me, as a conservative, as a blogger, and as a reader.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But that hardly makes Fecke unique among leftybloggers; he’s been doing it a long time, and among what passes for the mainstream of leftybloggers, he’s no worse than most, better than quite a few.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is <\/em>business.<\/p>\n

Part of it is that, as someone who once did <\/em>aspire to be a journalist, it sticks in my craw when I see people practicing the craft shoddily – even allowing that I was no master of the craft myself.\u00a0 As a conservative, it irritates me even more when that slipshod craft is practiced toward partisan ends.<\/p>\n

But above all?<\/p>\n

We – overtly partisan bloggers of the left and the right – are engaged in a battle for the hearts and minds of Americans; of Minnesotans.\u00a0 Left-leaning benefactors – from George Soros<\/a> on down – are pouring a lot <\/em>of money into trying to win that battle, from projects big (bankrolling attack-PR firm “Media Matters for America”, with whom the Monitor’s <\/em>parent organization, the Center for Independent Media, used to share offices) to small (trying to establish online publications like the Monitor<\/em> and its sister publications, Colorado Confidential<\/a> <\/em>and the ironically-named Iowa Independant<\/em><\/a>\u00a0as reputable “news” organizations).\u00a0 <\/em>They are – in my opinion – trying to buy credibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It’s working, in many respects; the mainstream media routinely carries Media Matters hit pieces as if they were independent research; some local media<\/a> give the Monitor, <\/em>likewise, complete credence.\u00a0 Hiring Eric Black wasn’t a bad move toward that end, one must admit.<\/p>\n

Against that, the center-right independent alternative media has…well, not a lot of\u00a0money, at least none that I’ve seen filtering down to us lil’ ol’ conservative bloggers in Minnesota.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Just facts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In my three-part series, I presented a bunch of them; either shoddy attribution or plagiarism, depending on your definition of either.\u00a0 I present them, unvarnished, to help the unaligned news consumer and voter gauge the credence they want to give the various news – and alternative news – options available to them.<\/p>\n

And in the online world, facts are available like never before.<\/p>\n

So I’d like to present this challenge to center-right bloggers in Minnesota; look over the Monitor<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Find the quotes that are presented as if they were direct quotes made to Monitor <\/em>reporters – in other words, quotes that are not attributed to press releases, AP copy, or linked to news organization websites or other blogs.\u00a0 And if you’re a center-right blogger in Iowa or Colorado, you can follow suit with your local Center for Independent Media affiliate as well.<\/p>\n

Google ’em.\u00a0<\/p>\n

See if you get any hits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If\u00a0 you do, see if those hits predate the\u00a0MinMon\/ColCon\/IoIndy <\/em>piece in which the otherwise-unattributed quote appeared.<\/p>\n

If so – publish it in your blog.\u00a0 Let the world know.\u00a0 Shine a light on the type of “credibility” that the lefty plutocrats’ pieces of silver have bought them.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

And please keep me posted.<\/p>\n

The battle for this nation’s hearts and minds needs to be fought at a higher level.<\/p>\n

So let’s fight it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Someone asked me, in relation to my\u00a0series\u00a0 (Parts I, II and III)\u00a0\u00a0on\u00a0the\u00a0Minnesota Monitor’s sloppy attribution and possible apparent plagiarism\u00a0– “why are you pounding so hard on Jeff Fecke?” I’ll cite Michael Corleone; “It’s not personal.\u00a0 It’s business”.\u00a0 Oh, I’ll cop to having “creative differences” with Fecke; his non-Monitor blogging over the past few years has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[326,31,24,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-alt-media","category-blogs","category-culture-war","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1003"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49895,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003\/revisions\/49895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}