Blogosphere Triumphalism

I'm not quite sure I grasp all the blogosphere triumphalism surrounding the Killian memos. After CBS ran the story, the conservative side of the 'sphere came up with dozens of purported debunkings of their authenticity, almost all of which turned out to be more purported than debunking. Then after a few days of back-and-forth, traditional reporters at The Washington Post came out with a more careful, more accurate, more actually-debunking story. The folks at PowerLine and LGF are, at best, Gettier cases, they didn't do any of the actual debunking. Instead, it was done by reporters working for major papers. And good for them. And shame on CBS. But I don't really see what the blogs had to do with it.

UPDATE: Discount Blogger says the bloggers "broke the story". But that's what I mean about Gettier cases (apologies for the technical philosophy reference, though) -- they didn't break the story. The stuff they posted -- proportional fonts didn't exist in 1971, you can't do a superscript on a typewriter, etc., etc. -- was all wrong. The Post's much more convincing analysis was based on comparing the purported Killian memos to other contemporaneous documents, something that, as far as I know, the 'sphere didn't do. If I'm wrong about that, then I'm wrong. But I don't think I am wrong.

If I do a post tomorrow claiming -- utterly without evidence -- that John Ashcroft is a closeted homosexual and then two weeks later a New York Times reporter unearths (non-forged) photos of Ashcroft with his gay lover, did I "break" the Gay Ashcroft story? Know, I didn't. I was just engaging in a little speculation driven by my partisan prejudices (I don't like Ashcroft) and a random bit of folk wisdom holding that strongly anti-gay folks are often closeted gays. The Times broke the story. Or, in the case of the Killian memos, USA Today and The Washington Post broke it by coming up with actual, accurate information that debunked them, rather than inaccurate evidence for a conclusion that happened to be correct.