Blog snark ain't as easy as it looks

Leave It To The Professionals

by digby

Brad DeLong asks once again "why, oh why, can't we have a better press corps?" This one is pretty funny:

Round 1:

Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart used a tweet from Rep. Jack Kimble of California as a launching pad for a blog post on who is to blame for the current federal deficits...

Round 2:

There is no Rep. Jack Kimble; that Twitter account is a spoof...

Round 3: The Washington Post's Chris Cilizza:

Twitter holds real peril for political reporters, too.... Jonathan Capehart.... [T]he double-edged sword that is Twitter.... The immediacy that has turned Twitter into an international phenomenon... presents major challenges for journalists trying to live by the "trust but verify" credo...

It is not Twitter's fault that Washington Post reporters have no clue how to do their jobs.

Apparently the Huffington Post also referred at one point to Kimble as a real candidate, too.

I'm inclined to be sympathetic to Capehart --- it's easy to get duped by spoofs. But I am surprised that he would get duped by this one. And obviously any journalist or blogger should do some due diligence on a congressman he's never heard of before. But I don't think this is a matter of professional ethics alone. Any real blogger would automatically google the name of the alleged politician to find out what other stupid things he may have said in order to make a better blog post. And once you google the name you find out very quickly that he's a phony.

It's not that we have greater integrity, although sometimes we do. It's that we know good blogging. There's an art to the quick hit on the absurdities of political blather. It ain't as easy as it looks.

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