Stephen's Political Statements Political commentary and links to political stuff, by Stephen Duncan Jr, a Programmer/Web Geek working in the defense industry.

Focusing on the negative: the Left - from Ann Althouse.

hat I've noticed, over and over, is that the bloggers on the right link to you when they agree and ignore the disagreements, and the bloggers on the left link only for the things they disagree with, to denounce you with short posts saying you're evil/stupid/crazy, and don't even seem to notice all the times you've written posts that take their side. Why is this happening? I find it terribly, terribly sad.

While it would be easy to take this as an opportunity to bash liberals, I think there is a potential explanation. People frequently blog to spread the opinions they feel aren't being given a strong voice elsewhere. With a mainstream media that slants so far leftward, it's primarily extremist leftist nuts who have incentive to blog. Could that be why the reaction from leftist bloggers is so different?

Update: Josh Poulson writes a longer post going into detail on the mechanics of how the difference in perception of how much you're voice is heard might affect these kind of reactions.

Jeff Jarvis: Shame on the New York Times. Jeff provides a detailed rebuttal, as well as an ethical condmenation of this NYT article. Jeff, ever the optimist, considers this an attempt to improve journalism and the NYT:

: Let me make one thing very clear: I like, read, and respect The New York Times and I care about journalism and that is why it's worth going after this story: to turn journalism into a self-correcting mechanism, as we call our new medium.

I'm not feeling that optimistic. I take it, instead, as another sign journalism right now is a very sick industry. It seems likely that it will take something more drastic before the problem is fixed.