What "Rathergate" was really all about

It's not about busting the ass of the "liberal media," or trying to connect the Kerry campaign to shady business. NYU Assistant Professor Adam Peneberg, writing in Wired, adds some perspective to the whole sordid affair:

But if it weren't for wild and wooly blogs -- in this case, conservative ones -- the story might have withered on the vine. They function as a vast, ad-hoc quality-control department, reflecting the entire political spectrum. Suddenly readers can (and do) subject reporters to unprecedented levels of scrutiny. Facts are analyzed and checked against their sources, quotes deconstructed, grammar parsed -- all of this done in public view.

This isn't the first time that blogs have kept an issue alive. The first blog-driven controversy caused the fall of Trent Lott when bloggers located quotes from previous speeches that many believed were racist. Another led to The New York Times op-ed page instituting a policy on corrections for its columnists.

Whether a blog leans left, right or sideways, as a collective force they are working to keep reporters honest. Journalists may not like their methods -- having your work sliced and diced in public is no fun -- but the end result may be better-quality news.

(emphasis added by me)
In the blogosphere, the story was really more about frustration with the sloppiness of the media than anything else. It bothers me that some people treat the whole affair as some sort of partisan hit-job, as I don't think the facts of the case bear out that conclusion. The point is that the media matter, and should be held accountable.