Maureen Dowd is having a rough Monday, said Allahpundit in Hot Air. The New York Times columnist was caught “cribbing” a long line—questioning the Bush administration’s motives for using “torture”—from a blog post by Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall. Dowd’s “unspeakably lame” excuse is that a friend fed her the line, but this just the latest in a string of cases demonstrating how much newspapers are influenced by the liberal blogosphere.
It’s silly to use the “Maureen Dowd–Josh Marshall plagiarism incident” as evidence of liberal bias in media, said Nate Silver in FiveThirtyEight. “The reason that liberal blogs are cited more often in the mainstream media is because they are more plentiful and more widely read than conservative blogs.” Liberals just dominate blogs the way conservatives dominate talk radio.
It’s certainly safe to say that reporters, editors, TV news producers, and pundits read lots of political blogs, said Glenn Greenwald in Salon. At the very least, this smashes the myth that bloggers are “parasites” stealing the work of real journalists. Dowd’s “wholesale, uncredited copying”—which she has admitted—showed that “the parasitical behavior is often the reverse of how it is depicted.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Weapons: Julia Garner stars in 'hyper-eerie' psychological thrillerThe Week Recommends Zach Cregger's 'top notch' new film opens with 17 children disappearing at exactly the same time
-
Freakier Friday: Lohan and Curtis reunite for 'uneven' but 'endearing' sequelThe Week Recommends Mother-and-daughter comedy returns with four characters switching bodies
-
Al fresco art: the UK's best sculpture parksThe Week Recommends Soak up the scenery with a stroll through these open-air galleries
