Case Closed on Rathergate

Here is a fabulous side-by-side comparison of the fake Ra^thergate documents and some authentic TexANG documents. The Washington Post is doing its job, unlike much of the rest of Old Media.

Of course, it will take a long time for Old Media to acknowledge that GIPs (Guys In Pajamas, as they were disparagingly referred to by CBS executive Jonathan Klein) might actually know something, and might even do a better job of ferreting out facts than they do. This morning's Chicago Tribune had a front page article on blogs, in which they made hay out of the shocking revelation that some bloggers - gasp - actually are conservative! Of course, they make no note at all of the fact that most Old Media types - including Dan Rather - are liberals, and have a long track record of voting Democratic, speaking at Democratic fundraisers, and giving money to Democrats running for office. Nor have they excoriated George Soros for giving millions of dollars to noxious groups like moveon.org, the way they did the Swift Vets for speaking out about John Kerry.

In the end, the bias of Old Media may end up being irrelevant. The blogosphere will become the much-needed system of checks and balances that is needed for a free press. Certainly, in this case, it's obvious that the blogosphere did a far better job of fact-checking and research than CBS.

Here's a good explanation of why the blogosphere works so well, based on F. A. Hayek's economic model of the efficiencies of decentralization. Since there's nothing more decentralized than blogs on the Internet, is it possible that there's nothing more efficient than the blogosphere for information seeking and sharing? (Credit to Instapundit for linking to the first and third articles linked here.)