There have been hundreds - maybe thousands - of diaries lamenting the idiocies of the MSM in their approach to covering the shameful conduct of this administration and the Republicans in Congress who aided and abetted.
We have analyzed all their sins, from taking BushCo talking points and reprinting them to taking money under the table for writing propaganda and calling it news, from missing important stories until they were too big to ignore to attacking the netroots for calling their credibility into question.
And it doesn't get any more mainstream than the New York Times.
So I was pleasantly surprised when I went to the NYT site this morning, and found this:
WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 — It is not often that a local government tries to turn down $10 million in federal construction money.
But then it is not every day that an Alaska congressman surprises a Florida community with the gift of a highway interchange that just happens to abut the property of a major political fund-raiser.
Now I thought I remembered something about this story, so I went searching through the Daily Kos diaries. And sure enough, our very own klondike wrote about this more than a week ago (and a h/t to you!). And he attributed it to TPM from the day before.
Now it's a great story - all about Rep. Don Young (Crook-Alaska) putting in an earmark for a highway interchange right next to land owned by a great buddy of his. And the way the earmark was inserted was, um, shall we say ... unconstitutional?
So I'm glad the story itself will get more play, and the heat will be turned up yet again on Young.
But as a former journalist myself, I read, reread and read yet again the entire NYT story, and could not find a whiff of an attribution to TPM anywhere. As far as its readers are concerned, the Gray Lady found this story on its own and undertook original reporting to bring it to them.
This, folks, is a problem, because it demonstrates that the NYT continues its shoddy reporting standards. If the Miami Herald had reported it first and the Times picked it up, it would have given the Florida paper credit. So it's intellectual thievery, at the very least.
But it's more important than that, because not giving TPM attribution is an obstacle to the netroots reaching out to the millions of people who don't follow politics online and tend to believe the MSM that we're all a bunch of pajama-clad kooks, conspiracy theorists and lefty pinko commies.
I am going to write to Clark Hoyt, the NYT "public editor" about this, and I hope some of you will think of doing the same.