Methinks they protesteth too much

Today's Hackensack, NJ Record has yet another story from a so-called "journalist" pooh-pooh-ing blogs as something no one reads. No link yet, but here's an excerpt, with comments from Yours Truly:

The survey reveals that blogs, as interesting as they may be to journalists, have yet to capture the imagination -- or the eyeballs -- of the general public.



"I just think it's kind of a waste of time," said Peter Hoytema, the pastor at Midland Park Christian Reformed Church in Ridgewood. "I don't find a whole lot of productive discussion coming out of them."

Yes, and a minister is just your average citizen, right?

...interviews with people in North Jersey confirm that blogs aren't really registering. Even if they know what blogs are, they don't usually read them. And if they do, it's generally the blog of someone they know.



[snip]



So is it all a bunch of hype? A bit, says Jay Rosen, the journalism department chairman at New York University and a blogger himself.

Coming on the heels of Andrew Sullivan's attempt, as put forth in Matt Taibbi's article in New York Press, to "put bloggers in their place", this just tells me that journalists are scared shitless of bloggers, because we don't have corporate masters telling us to regurgitate the Talking Points of the Day issued by Karl Rove. I'm sorry, but a profession which has people like Judith Miller spouting the Gospel According to Ahmad Chalabi in justifying the Iraq War, and which broadcasts the Swift Boat Liars ads over and over again in news reports, thus saving the organization the trouble of actually having to spend money to broadcast their lies and smears, and which has given George W. Bush a free pass every step of the way, has NOTHING to say about so-called "journalistic integrity."



Further proof that the MSM has its collective nose up Bush's ass:

Let the fence-mending begin. According to a Broadcasting & Cable source in Washington, D.C., CBS News president Andrew Heyward, along with Washington bureau chief Janet Leissner, recently met with White House communications director Dan Bartlett, in part to repair chilly relations with the Bush administration.



CBS News’ popularity at the White House—never high to begin with—plunged further in the wake of Dan Rather’s discredited 60 Minutes story on George Bush’s National Guard service.



An incentive for making nice is the impending report from the two-member panel investigating CBS's use of now-infamous documents for the 60 Minutes piece.



Heyward was “working overtime to convince Bartlett that neither CBS News nor Rather had a vendetta against the White House,” our source says, “and from here on out would do everything it could to be fair and balanced.” CBS declined to comment.

Fair and balanced, eh? Interesting how CBS is using the slogan of Fox News to demonstrate how its coverage is going to be from now on. "Fair and Balanced" now means "Give Bush a Journalistic Blowjob Daily". So now we know what we can expect from CBS News from now on.



Liberal media indeed. Perhaps if journalists actually did their jobs instead of blowing the President every day, we wouldn't need bloggers.