Nice Travis. That's the thing about MSM "journalists" - they don't check stuff out, and they can't check stuff out as quickly and effectively as 100,000 Freepers. They are totally naked, vulnerable to being scammed at every turn. And they used to say, how can you trust the Internet - but now the tables have turned. The old media dinosaurs can't move without being swarmed under with the truth. I won't miss them.
They do check stuff. They just believe that we're too ignorant or lazy to check it out ourselves. You think no one checked out Paul Harkin's claims to being a naval aviator Ace in Nam? Most knew he wasn't. The MSM is being killed by their own invention, Lexis-Nexis. They believed that the cost would drive the folks away from using it. But a great many local school districts have contracts with L/N and provide passwords to their taxpayers as a service. That's how I get it. It's a stripped down version, but my best friend says her private contract for her law practice is not substantially better than mine. MSM must rue the day the internet became public domain.
I see a great analogy here with the way the computer industry evolved in the late 80's and early 90's.
In the early 80's we had many large mainframe systems. Most corporations had huge computer complexes with dedicated computer facilites with clean environments and false floors housing multi-million dollar systems with concentrated computing power. Users were all networked into the central mainframe.
Then along came the PC and Local Area Networks.
Soon we had the concept of distributed computing. Lots of processing power at the endpoints interacting with each other to perform a far more powerful task than could ever be concentrated in one place.
So it is today, the concentrated media sources that once controlled everything and owned all the printing presses plus the distribution infrastructure have been usurped by millions of individuals enabled by distributed computing power, their diverse experience and intelligence, and their ability to communicate and collaborate to address a problem. You no longer need to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars to get your voice heard, you just need to have a credible message.
The "Legacy" Media, as they should rightly be called is in it's Swansong. It's power to control thought has been eradicated, it's influence decimated, and it's credibility bebunked.
The King is dead, Long Live the King!