An interesting and damning article is now up at Salon by Eric Boehlert:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/04/08/schiavo_memo/index.html
Some highlights after the jump.
Still gloating over their role in unmasking CBS's faulty National Guard memo story last September, right-wing bloggers launched a new memo-based crusade against the so-called liberal media last month, one that turned out to be completely phony. But unlike CBS and its tarred former anchor, Dan Rather, who eventually admitted their mistakes in the Memogate affair, these bloggers (many of whom were also involved in the CBS campaign) haven't had the guts to apologize for their blunder.
. . .
The irony is that the memo wasn't all that significant to the larger Schiavo story. Conservatives magnified its importance by suggesting that it had led Americans to conclude that Republicans were playing politics with the right-to-die case. (A vast majority of Americans, including self-identified conservatives, told pollsters the administration was wrong to get involved in the Schiavo case.) But in fact the existence of the memo was not that widely reported -- no more widely reported than Rep. Tom DeLay's comment to conservative activists that Terri was a gift from God for their cause, nor than that conservative Christian groups were using the story for fundraising activities.
Nonetheless, dealt a weak hand in the Schiavo case, bloggers all went in on a bluff. And now they refuse to pay up. In fact, they're actually congratulating themselves for helping "get to the bottom" of the story. But the meltdown has exposed their often mindless naiveté.
. . .
According to Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit, which helped hype the story early on, the take-away from the episode was about the mainstream press and how it "will publish stuff without much in the way of authentication."
That's an art some bloggers have already perfected.
Overall, a scathing article, and I recommend reading the whole thing (viewing a quick advertisement required, of course).
The only bone of contention I have is that Boehlert too often simply refers to "bloggers", rather than "right-wing bloggers". Although the article does make reasonably clear that it's talking about Powerline, the impression is left, I think, that what Powerline did is typical of "problems with bloggers in general".
It would be nice, too, to mention that Powerline is run by attorneys affiliated with right-wing think tanks, rather than true "citizen-journalists".
The record, I think, is pretty clear that 1) investigative work on the major left-leaning blogs is generally thorough and 2) left-leaning blogs have a habit of apologizing for errors and retracting mistakes.
Hopefully, those are facts that the mainstream media will eventually discover.