Northern Valley Beacon

Attention spans seem to have been conditioned by the length of time a computer CPU can hold some digits. Human memories that are connected to cyberspace cannot seem to hold information from one web log post to another. And so, now I am accused of being a defender and apologist for the main stream media. This is because I am very critical of the handling of Gropegate by the the South Dakota blog mob. But I have written more posts critical of the press than I have of web logs.

First of all, there is no main stream media in South Dakota. Two newspapers do rise occasionally to the level of reportage and writing that characterizes the best and most prominent journalistic enterprises, but the rest of the media float on the backwash of village gossip. A few weeklies practice a level of community journalism that tries to rise above the mean and terribly destructive fractiousness that courses through the villages and turns them into fuming wastelands. Mostly, the media suffer from insufficiency of intellects and discerning knowledge. They are caught between trying to emulate their perception of what the truly influential media does and serving a declining revenue source of advertisers. The news business has been debilitated by competing for audiences with entertainment and by trying to serve the fractious interests of people who divide the world into two classes and form their identities on one of those sides. This is the brain-soft mentality induced by the media that Orwell tried to warn us about.

I am no defender of the news media. I am a defender and an advocate for the media as the Fourth Estate, a virtual arm of government that informs the public what their government is doing and is ever vigilant for signs of incompetence, dishonesty, and tyranny. The press is given an inordinate amount of freedom and power to serve that end, and when news media compromise that function, I get testy. And when news media do not maintain the standards of performance established by 400-some years of practice in America, I get a hopeless, sinking feeling.

I am very critical of web logs. My criticism is that web logs are either the products of a partisan agenda or individual egos. Usually both. As such, they make no pretense of trying to discern what is true and what is not. My colleague Dr. Silas, who directed the information-gathering and categorization for the Press Project, which examined the integrity of information that compromised the election campaign of 2004, has likened many web logs to the writing on public restroom walls. And the issue is not whether the blogs adhere to the rules of journalism. The issue is that they don't follow the basic requisites of expository writing and writing which purports to advance viewpoints based upon a review of facts and the application of reason. Dr. Silas confirms what most of us observe: that most web postings are ad hominem attacks and fabrications and misrepresentations of what other people have said, thought, or done.

So, when some bloggers contend that blogs perform a function that the media does not, I take issue based on the facts. My concern is not that I am inherently against blogs. What the hell are you reading here, if you've gotten this far? My contention is that blogs can be an immensely valuable addition to the exchange of information, but not when one must assess every utterance for its competence, its accuracy, and its integrity of purpose. A great many blog posts can be filed in the false information category. And most of the rest can be filed under one of the categories of rhetorical fallacy. The answer offered by some blog promoters is that we should turn on our bullshit detectors and turn up our critical thinking apparatus and decide for ourselves. The fallacy in that is who has time or resources to check out facts to that degree? That is why writers and editors are so important to the flow of information. They do the critical work of establishing some standard of truth and reliability.

A recent comment suggested that I may be hung up on an English professor's fussy definitions of what comprises an acceptable piece of writing. I admit that I am repulsed by the bad writing in many blogs, and I don't mean just the typographical errors and grammatical mishaps. Slovenly writing denotes slovenly minds. But before I ever ventured into a college classroom, I spent about 13 years behind the typewriter (remember those?) and on editorial desks. Journalists who mishandled information in the way that the Gropegate story has meandered very quickly became ex-journalists. And I helped quite a few find their way to the street.

My last full-time position as a working journalist was as the editor of the farm and business sections of a newspaper in a fairly good sized metropolitan area that had three other daily newspapers (I started out on the sports desk of one of the others), and I also coordinated the coverage of higher education, coordinated opinion surveys with other media, and was coordinator of investigative reporting projects. Much of the investigative reporting was done in concert with reporters from the competing media, and because I was reporting and editing matters concerning the economy, most of the leads we developed on stories for investigative work involved the business community. However, on occasion I was assigned to work on political stories, too. I had training in finding documentary evidence that corroborated what witnesses could tell us.

Investigative teams I worked with produced stories that led to 18 convictions for major crimes, and 70-some law enforcement actions, mostly involving consumer fraud. In preparing those stories, I think we spent as much time in the corporate counsel's office as we did developing the information. Our publishers would not let us get anything into print that was not absolutely nailed. While news media have the right to say what they want in the form of an opinion on the performance of public officials, entertainers, and anyone else offering something for public consumption under the fair comment and criticism rules, they do not have the right to make false or erroneous statements of fact. Journalistic investigative pieces have to be prepared with the same care as court cases or the media can end paying liabilities that will drive them into bankruptcy.

Major newspapers are approached every day by attorneys who represent clients who claim they have been unfairly damaged by news stories. In most cases the claims are dismissed because the stories are true and the reporters have the records and evidence to support them. In a number of other cases, the complainants have been stung by a criticism that falls under the fair comment and criticism rule. In the few cases where media realize they have committed an error, they work hard for an out-of-court settlement. Few cases make it to litigation. But journalists work under that kind of stringent requirement for accuracy.

Bloggers don't.

The self-preening and crowing of bloggers over how they have displaced the news media in breaking important stories and forcing them to play catch-up is inane. They perceive that they are a force that drives the new age of information and they crow like the roosters that assume that their noise is what makes the sun come up. The people working on the data categorized for the Press Project say evidence shows that blogs are the effects not the motivators of political dialogue. Dr. Silas says that what shows up on blogs are like the skin eruptions that are symptoms of some virulent strain coursing through the body. They are often the public expression of some political strategy that has its origins in the fetid precincts of political operatives. Communications analysts can trace the provenance of many political blog posts to such origins.

Bloggers, like members of the press, are on safe ground as long as they confine their remarks to opinion. When they begin to report facts, the rules of accuracy and evidence kick in. And that leads us back to Gropegate.

We were given notice last M0nday that storm clouds were gathering on the horizon and a state senator was targeted for a lightening strike. In that "teaser" for things to come SDWC mentioned a letter that set the matter in motion:

This letter from President Pro Tempore Schoenbeck in turn set off a letter in support of Schoenbeck's position from Senate Minority Leader Garry Moore. I'm told he sent this to other members of the Democratic Party.

This was the first mistake. It misrepresented the reaction of Sen. Minoritiy Leader Moore and I, among others, took the statement on its face value. Sen. Moore did not support Schoenbeck's position. He shared the concern over the complaint that had been filed and acknowledged that it had to be dealt with, but in every other aspect, he rebuked Schoenbeck.

It turns out that Schoenbeck had issued a letter to Sen. Dan Sutton that was what reporter Bob Mercer called a godfather-like offer he did not think Sutton could refuse. He told Sutton he could either resign from the Senate or be subjected to an investigation through which he could be the subject of a special session. Sen. Moore did not "support Schoenbeck's position," but instead called for procedures for due process to be put in place should such an occasion ever arise again.

While many bloggers and some reporters claim to have been aware of the allegations made against Sen. Sutton since last February, Sen. Moore appears to have been blind-sided by the whole business. He did not join Schoenbeck's call for a resignation, but was perturbed that the matter had not been reported to him. This was misrepresented, and we were led to think that Moore endorsed Schoenbeck's tactic.

Some of the bloggers are pointing their querulous, shaking fingers (Work on that one, BOJ.) at the news media for sitting on the story while publishing news of allegations against Bob Sahr. I know nothing of the details of all this. All I know is that Bob Sahr withdrew from his race for the PUC, but Dan Sutton is standing firm in his race for the Senate.

And some bloggers are giving sanctimonious testimony that the blogs did not attach any names to their rumor mongering. The journalists did. That is not hard to understand. In journalism, there is no story if there is not an identity. Things don't happen to figments and figments are not perpetrators. To report a story without a name is like reporting an earthquake that happened on a planet somewhere. One does not have to get past the first chapters of a good journalism text to understand why that principle is an imperative. Names of victims can be withheld for discretionary reasons, but when they are the effective accusers, the accused has a right to face them and the public has right to know who they are. Juvenile protections expire at the age of 18.

Bob Mercer is the only journalist I am aware of right now who says he heard the rumor nine months ago. He claims that the media was not given any reason to believe that the story was other than "unsubstantiated gossip." In that nine months, the Attorney General's office apparently did not think the charge merited formal action.

The story broke with Lee Schoenbeck's letter, which he copied to Dennis Wiese, Sen. Garry Moore, and other legislative leaders. He says his action was spurred by Dennis Wiese deciding to push the matter because of the notoriety given the Mark Foley's antics in the U.S. House. The only documentation offered was a paragraph from Garry Moore's letter to Schoenbeck, and it was misrepresented in content and context.

This was not a case of a brave blogger sitting in his jammies revealing true events. It was a case of someone getting a smidgen of information and building all manner of inaccuracies and speculations on it.

News accounts have since pieced together the sequence of events and reported what the letters actually said. But the merry little band of bloggers have been so busy congratulating themselves and celebrating that they have still to notice.

The fact that the page was sharing a motel room with Sen. Sutton through an arrangment with his parents, and the fact that Sutton and Dennis Wiese who were collaborators in the beef plant project in Flandreau are, of course, dismissed as irrelevant because such information emphasizes the absence of even the most casual and cursory checking in getting a context for this story. The beef plant project collapsed and Dan Sutton is involved in trying to recover some money--to the tune of $850,000--that people in Flandreau would like to have back. The two men are now adversaries. Of course, that is irrelevant.

If this exercise is a demonstration in seeking truth, then pigs can indeed fly and we will await the Sibson Revised Standard Version of the Bible so that we may know the truth

The blogs have done what they do well. They have unleashed gossip, speculation, accusation, and condemnation. They have set in motion a story for which they feel no responsibility for supplying the complete facts.

This is not a contest between blogs and the traditional news media. If a blog broke this story in an accurate, credible, and responsible way, I would be the first to congratulate its authors. This story broke a few weeks before an election. I suspect that it is a boil on the ass of a raging political corpus.

I am still waiting for a complete account, whether from a news medium or a blogger. At this point, there will be hell to pay no matter which way this story breaks.

Let's see who can truly serve the truth. If bloggers can suspend their self-aggrandizement long enough to do the job, more power to them.