Outside the Beltway

CBS Blog Story Gets it Wrong

James Joyner · Wednesday, June 7, 2006 · 3 comments

CBS reporter Melissa McNamara was kind enough to email me a link to her stories rounding up blogger reaction to various stories. I was, however, rather bemused at the one in which I was featured.

The lede:

While pundits are already on to the 2008 presidential election, bloggers haven’t stopped talking about 2004. And, an article in Rolling Stone magazine this week is adding to fuel to some liberals’ fire.

One would get the impression that bloggers aren’t discussing the 2008 election or that “pundits” had long given up discussion of 2004. Rather obviously, neither is the case. Indeed, all of the bloggers McNamara lists in this section have written about the 2008 elections numerous times and her own short section references stories on the 2004 debate in two major opinion magazines.

Conservative bloggers were, predictably, unhappy with the article. Some say they simply ignored it. “I saw mention earlier today of a piece in Rolling Stone by Robert Kennedy, Jr. arguing that the Republicans stole the 2004 election. Given that it was 1) a Kennedy, and a junior at that; 2) in a rock mag; and 3) plainly idiotic, I ignored it,” James Joyner of Outside the Beltway writes.

Yes, I wrote that. But, unless McNamara wrote her precis of the blogger reactions late Thursday night (I posted that snarky comment at 21:29 EST), she should have seen that I followed up with much more. Indeed, even the initial posting made it clear that I ignored it until it was obvious that the Left Blogosphere was running with it. By the early morning hours on Friday, though, I had added 2998 words of rather detailed analysis and rebuttal.

After noting a few more reactions from the Blogosphere, she snarks:

Perhaps these arguments explain why pundits are focusing on an election two years away rather than one two years in the past.

But, again, these are not mutually exclusive options.