Emily Rooney

They'll need it for all the hate e-mail zinging its way to John Carroll now that the national Democratic blogs have picked up the story of how he and his Beat the Press-ters blew the whole blog-accountability issue the other day (see here, here and here):

... Yeah, John Carroll, intrepid investigative reporter and professor of journalism at Boston University (where standards are obviously slipping) reported that Bowers, Stoller, and Shields were all Jerome Armstrong. The source? This blatantly satiric post by Shields. Then, for good measure, the producers took a quote from Blue Mass Group blogger David Blue out of context to make it seem he was attacking Jerome. Then, the panel of know-nothings sat around lamenting the lack of accountability in the blog world, clearly feeling the heat of their impending irrelevance. ...

The show posted a correction today, but the Kossistas are not satisfied - the post is followed by 70 replies (as I type), many accusing not just Carroll but Emily Rooney of being, at best, idiots.

At the Dig, Joe Keohane suggests bloggers and their minions get a grip:

... Look, people are right to be annoyed. Lecturing someone on having no standards and then getting the facts wrong is sloppy and embarrassing as hell. But Carroll was right to raise the point of blogger ethics, because the more widely read and influential blogs are, the more important it becomes to figure out where information is coming from. He did it poorly, ate shit and issued a correction. It's over. So let's call off the e-jihad (e-had?). By the tone of these things, we're just one unflattering caricature of Kos away from rioting in the streets. ...

The Outraged Liberal agrees:

... I still believe we need to develop thicker skins if we want to dish it. out.