Prepare To Be Surprised

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Howard Fineman

I think Howard Fineman has been one of the more admirable members of the mainstream media. It does seem to me that he tries hard to get stories right and to be fair-- and that's saying a lot these days. Fineman's MSNBC piece today covers an amazingly wide range of subjects, including the impact of bloggers, bias and the reasons for it, Vietnam, Watergate, and so forth-- all in two pages.

Here's a killer quote:

In this situation, the last thing the AMMP needed was to aim wildly at the president—and not only miss, but be seen as having a political motivation in attacking in the first place. Were Dan Rather and Mary Mapes after the truth or victory when they broadcast their egregiously sloppy story about Bush's National Guard Service? The moment it made air it began to fall apart, and eventually was shredded by factions within the AMMP itself, conservative national outlets and by the new opposition party that is emerging: The Blogger Nation. It's hard to know now who, if anyone, in the "media" has any credibility.

It is a must-read.