Alberto Gonzales spent the day explaining the NSA snoop program by giving a speech at Georgetown, and the media coverage offered a perfect example of why we need the blogosphere to get a complete picture of any story.
Here is the speech if you'd like to persuse it yourself. Then compare Powerline's coverage with that of CNN.com and the NY Times.
Powerline's lawyers provided commentary on the speech excerpts, not agreeing 100 percent, but certainly giving us the meat and potatoes of his talk with a rightward slant.
Reading CNN.com you'd think the entire event was a fracus. The first FIVE paragraphs of their coverage was devoted to hooded protesters there to disrupt the speech. Nothing wrong with hooded protesters, but according to CNN they WERE the story. Hardly.
The NY Times cannot be considered neutral on this story under any imaginable scenario. Their own reporter broke the bombshell under pleading protestations from Bush, and is trying to sell a book. I can imagine a state of war existing between the two.
Yet, they ran a fairly balanced story. Only one paragraph was devoted to the protesters, which was warranted, and both sides of the debate were presented. In contradiction to Powerline, their quoted lawyers were stacked against the operation as "illegal", but I didn't necessarily feel any slanted overtones.
To get a complete picture of almost any story these days news consumers need to be good sifters. Such is made possible by alternative media, ie bloggers, who can serve as checks and balances to the established media. And we know how the media loves those checks and balances.
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