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Blogs 'fail' in coverage of Russo-Georgia War

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Joshua Foust argues that blogs have not lived up to expectations in covering the Russo-Georgia War. He homes in on what he describes as 'large blogs'- the Small War Journal, Instapundit, the Washington Monthly etc. He's disappointed that they seem to have relied on the same set of sources as the mainstream media:
Soon after the war started on August 8th, on-the-ground reports were being filed by Russian and Georgian bloggers, some of which were even in English and, thus, required no translation. Yet most large blogs just continued to link to the same sources linking to the same stories based on official statements about the war. Or (just as bad) they linked to omnivorous pundits with little more to offer than stridently uninformed opinions. Where is the value added of such a thing?
Foust is also critical of the opinion offered on these blogs about the conflict:
Rather than providing the clarity, nuance, and honesty that they promise to provide, the big blogs instead retreated to their comfortable and predictable ideological corners.

2 Comments

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Akinoluna - a female Marine | August 20, 2008 3:43 PM

I've been complaining about this with milblogs for awhile
now. They constantly whine about how terrible the
mainstream media is, yet they quote them ALL THE TIME! They
couldn't function without the MSM because they get
virtually all of their info from there.

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Anonymous | September 15, 2008 4:28 PM

This is why some journalists won't bother with blogs - too many blogs give them information that they already know. But for those journalists that do bother, the investment of time and energy will pay off every now and then when they find a blog that gives them some unique content on a news story.