By Brad Friedman on 5/8/2005, 1:39pm PT  

Not much time to take this one apart properly, but New York Times' Adam Cohen today holds bloggers up to ethical standards which, he argues, ought to equal the high standards of those in the MSM.

While we agree with much of his thesis in general, one wonders if he ought to be throwing such stones from inside the Times' own fragile glass house.

This finger-wagging quote --- "Information should be verified before it is printed" --- amongst others, strikes one as more than just a tad ironic coming from the paper who allowed buckets of front page ink for Judith Miller to post un-verified information which helped march the world directly into a (so far) endless war.

Ms. Miller still works at --- and presumably collects a handsome salary from --- New York Times in the bargain. As she doesn't seem to have been held up to any particular set of ethics in the bargain, wouldn't Cohen's criticism be better directed homeward right about now?

Blogs, it seems, in Cohen's article are all tossed into the same ethically-challenged, non-journalistic barrel. All of us, apparently, require an "ethical upgrade" in Cohen's condescending opinion. True, we suppose, in as much as it would be appropriate for us to criticize the Times themselves for "reporting" done by super-market tabloids such as Weekly World News.

By way of example, here's just one graf from Cohen's piece:

[T]he real reason for an ethical upgrade is that it is the right way to do journalism, online or offline. As blogs grow in readers and influence, bloggers should realize that if they want to reform the American media, that is going to have to include reforming themselves.

Message to Mr. Cohen and the other MSM'ers apparently now beginning to defend their turf by entering into the "then they fight you" phase of Gandhi's famous quote: "Physician, heal thyself!"

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