Why blogs have become indispensable

On full display in this post from Powerline are all the reasons individual blogs have become so very important in news reporting.  It was the Powerline blog that exposed Dan Rather, Mary Mapes and CBS for their fraudulent reporting on George Bush's Air Force Texas National Guard service in 2000, reporting designed to present him as a person of privilege who gamed the system in order to avoid combat duty during the Vietnam War period.  Eventually all the Rather/CBS reporting was exposed as outright fraud and cost Rather his job and position as anchor of that once prestigious news channel.  What that disgraceful episode demonstrated for many was how politicized the MSM had become over time and consequently how unreliable it had become as unbiased, fair presenters of the news.  Since that exposure in 2000, blogs have proliferated.  Many of them now have the resources and talent to fact check and at a minimum correct the record after the many biased and distorted stories generated by CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Wapo, NYTimes, LATimes and all the rest of what became over time to be known as the mainstream media (MSM).  Somewhere along the way some wag renamed the mainstream media the "lame stream media" (LSM) which seems much more the appropriate appellation.  We are well served by these blogs at least until the MSM begins to report news with less bias and more honesty.

ADDED:  And here is another contemporary story that speaks to the importance of blogs in getting at the truth that people in positions that can influence public opinion want to obscure and distort to satisfy their own agenda, usually a nefarious political one.  The lesson is that it is increasingly difficult for democrats to manufacture a false narrative given the reach of the internet and authentic truth seekers out there.Very good thing.