But we're finding [blogging] works better for keeping on top of daily flaps than for learning genuinely new information. Bloggers rarely pick up the phone or go interview the middle-level bureaucrats who know the good stuff. It's a lot easier to chew over breaking stories and bash old media. Where do they get the information with which to bash? Often from, ahem, newspapers.Leave aside the question of how much "real reporting" bloggers do as compared to newspapers. If one looks at most of the vital disclosures of the last seven years -- whereby concealed, legally dubious behavior of one of the most secretive administrations of the modern era is exposed -- one finds that such exposure comes overwhelmingly from two sources: (1) conscientious whistle-blowers inside the Government, and (2) advocacy groups such as the ACLU, which have tirelessly waged one litigation battle after the next in order to unearth the Bush administration's secret, improper conduct.
Today, the ACLU (with whom, as I've previously disclosed, I consult on various matters) released three formerly secret Bush administration memos -- two from the CIA to the Office of Legal Counsel inside the DOJ, and one from OLC to the CIA -- which set forth, in a revoltingly clinical tone that is by now all-too-familiar, extremely permissive standards for what constitutes (and what does not constitute) "torture." Raw Story's Nick Juliano has an excellent summary of the memos' lowlights, including the assertion that treatment of detainees does not constitute "torture" as long as there is no "specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering," and the claim that interrogators are free to inflict mental harm as long as it falls short of "harm lasting months or even years after the acts were inflicted upon the prisoners."
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/07/24/journalism/index.html
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