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Remember this?

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Anatomy of a Freeper...http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1303577/posts

For those of you who just stumble around Instapundit, Hugh Hewitt, Powerline or The Corner, and a couple of internet sites to get your dose of non-Ratherised news, you may not have ever heard of a "Freeper". In a minute, I'm going to use the following example to give you a window into their world.

Freepers are people who post to a rather interesting bulletin board service called Free Republic. A lot of my blogging friends know about them, but surprisingly enough, not very many of them view them as a news source they visit frequently. I think the Freepers are an essential element in gathering news. If you go in with the right mindset, and know what you are looking for, it can be a goldmine of information.

Hugh Hewitt has often called freepers the Coast Watchers of the new media. When news happens, either in print, on radio, or on television, someone will post a link, and much of the meat of the story, as the beginning of a thread. Within minutes, if the story is juicy enough, just like flies, freepers all over will descend on the story and give their two cents worth.

Here's where the discernment of the person surfing has to come in. There are saboteurs who will immediately try to spin the story, especially if it's political, and there will be people from every walk of life taking their shots until the end of the thread takes the original picture the story paints and turns it into a Picasso.

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When the Rathergate story broke, there were responses, theories, and updates literally every time you hit the refresh button. Freepers are very much part of the face of new media. They are also very much a part of the blogosphere. The speed at which news travels on sites like this is the reason why liberals can no longer dominate the media and control the spin to suit their agenda. The news moves too fast. There are too many people who see stuff and post it, and there are too many smart people to praise it and spread it around if it has merit, and dissect it like a frog in biology class if it's bogus. In cases like Rathergate, a bogus story can be proven false, spread all over the world, and completely discrediting of the original reporter before he/she comes to work the next morning.