Funmurphys: the Blog

Are there already more mil bloggers in country than members of the MSM?

At what point will there be more bloggers embedded in Iraq than members in good standing of the MSM? I ask because Michelle Malkin and Bryan Preston are going over, joining Bill Roggio and Bill INDC/Iraq among others.

Since Michelle has decided to go on her own nickle (donations accepted), she asked that Eason Jordan pay Kathleen “Who are you to question me?” Carroll’s way instead:

“I have notified Jordan of our plans and encouraged him to move forward with his trip and his offer to bring Curt of Flopping Aces.More importantly, I have asked Jordan to extend the travel funds and security coverage he would have spent on me to the AP’s Kathleen Carroll.

Ms. Carroll, you may remember, was the AP executive who derided bloggers for sitting at home instead of traveling abroad to do their own reporting during the fauxtography debacle last summer:

“It’s hard to imagine how someone sitting in an air-conditioned office or broadcast studio many thousands of miles from the scene can decide what occurred on the ground with any degree of accuracy,” said Kathleen Carroll, AP’s senior vice president and executive editor.

Yet, from her own comfortable office, Ms. Carroll has decided that bloggers, Jordan, the U.S. military, and Iraqi government officials are all wrong to question her news organization’s questionable news sources.

Questionable news sources? Pretty strong words, but the Confederate Yankee digs into the story the way reporters in the movies do:

The only way I can do this is to take the 61 stories Curt found, Google the keywords and dates of the described events, and see if other news organizations can corroborate the details of the events provided. Those with LexisNexis access might be able to do a better job of verifying or disputing these accounts, but you get to research using the tool set you have, not the tools you would like to have. As I don’t have the time to do a complete search, I’ll attempt to search through roughly the first half of the 61 stories using Jamil Hussein as a source.”

The result?  Short answer – not pretty. Long answer – go read it yourself.

The question isn’t whether (some) bloggers do journalism (this one never soils his hands that way), but do journalists do journalism anymore? Or do they just write the story a source gives them, no questions asked.

Tags: embeds, sources