When the MSM attacks

It's hardly ever a pretty sight; for the MSM that is.

In this case it's the Columbia Journalism Review.

So what do you do when a ideological colleague starts to get trashed for using shoddy journalism standards to try and portray a negative portrayal of soldiers as a 'unbiased' look sat a soldiers life in Iraq, well you target an attack piece against their critics trying to downplay the original bad journalism with an article that shouldn't have even made the grade at a high school paper of course.

First The New Republic runs a series of pieces from serviceman Scott Thomas Beauchamp without disclosing:

1. he is married to a TNR staffer.
2. he is a committed liberal (even going so far as to volunteer for Howard Deans Presidential campaign) who by his own admission joined the military to give his creative writing some bonifides.
3. many of his claims are not just dubious but defy the laws of physics and are a those that are easily fact checked such as "only Iraqi police have glocks" are often flat out wrong.

So in defense of this masterpiece CJR attacks milbloggers as being keyboard activists not willing to put themselves on the line. Apparently at the higher levels of journalism the idea of even understanding those you are attacking is considered beneath you as is actually Googling the term 'milblogger'.

OK, so the first result just says "Military Blogs" in the title, maybe thats just the topic they discuss, fair enough, but by the 4th and 5th results the stories are actually about blogging from the front lines and milbloggers getting injured in Iraq, even a not so bright first year journalist student may pick up on the concept that milblogger = military blogger meaning a blogger who is either currently or formerly an active duty military member.

Ah, fact checking in the new age of journalism. If it wasn't so funny it would be sad.

Check out the WorldWide Standard , LGF, Hotair and pretty much any other large blog left or right for more.