Just now on MSNBC, in a discussion of blogs and the Obama speech on race, Alex Witt quoted "a post from the DailyKos" saying that Rev. Wright's controversial statements would cost Obama the nomination and set the Democratic Party back "100 years."
The bloggers involved in the discussion, Erica Anderson (sp?) "of Redstate.com" and Morris Reed, identified as a Democratic strategist, both disagreed with the statement, as would anyone with more than a junior high understanding of politics. But either neither of them was listening to the boneheaded intro, or they're not up enough on the world of blogs to know, or they couldn't be bothered to mention that the snippet quoted was clearly not the view of Kos himself or any of the official front-pagers here, and also was the exact opposite of anything that could be called a consensus view in the overall discussion here.
This also left viewers unfamiliar with DailyKos or blogging from anything but cable t.v. and smears from Fox News and other conservative organs with a very skewed view of the largest and most influential Democratic blog. A truly bad show from MSNBC, Alex Witt and her producers.
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So, that's the payoff from troll diaries. Someone will quote them to distort the clear and obvious majority view of a whole community. Great work, Hillary Clinton trolls!
It's hard to believe that people at MSNBC could really be that stupid, but then again, I'm sure they have pinhead interns and non-web-savvy individuals scattered throughout their workforce. On the other hand, this does make them look seriously uninformed at best (I know, what's new, it happens all the time) or deliberately distorting objective realities about what most people taken seriously at all here are really saying.
I know this is just a thing that happened, and while it bothers me, most viewers probably wouldn't notice it or give it much thought. But one other idea it brings up is that perhaps Kos and the official folks could distribute a media attribution guide, explaining the differences between attributing "Kos," "front-page diarists at DailyKos," "a recommended diary at DailyKos" and "a random public commenter at DailyKos." (Can anybody think of any other useful categories I missed which could be easily distinguished by hungover college interns at cable news operations?)
Alex
Choose Our President 2008