Back on November 4th, The American Spectator quoted sources who said that the bogus exit polls of election day afternoon were leaked--or heck, manufactured--by the Kerry Camp to the press.

But rather than investigate their source, and how they made their way to both bloggers and Matt Drudge, the legacy media are using them as a tool to trash the Blogosphere.

The Blogosphere is often a source of news as it happens--or sometimes seemingly before it happens, which means that (just like the MSM) sometimes it gets things wrong. But unlike the typical blow-dried anchorman, bloggers' extensive use of hyperlinks make it easy for anyone to track sources and follow a story, and allow readers to decide for themselves the accuracy of a story or opinion. Read enough of the Blogosphere and use Google News enough, and it's possible to know far more about a story than, say, Dan Rather does. (Not that that's saying much of course these days.)

As N.Z. Bear writes, while leftwing blogger Wonkette's posting of exit polls has been used by the legacy media as the posterchild of all that's wrong with the entire Blogosphere, she had an obvious, easy to understand warning notice alongside them:

Publishing a story which isn’t fully confirmed is fine, as long as it is clearly marked as such. Bloggers need to hold up their end of the bargain here, and ensure that they are clearly label as rumor that which can’t be confirmed: which is exactly what Ana Marie Cox did at Wonkette when publishing the exit polls, declaring:

“…the little birdie is really skittish and not exactly trustworthy in all cases. Please vote, even if you live in PA. These could be total forgeries, designed to keep you from voting… Specific objections have been raised to the Minnesota numbers in particular. All with grains of salt. Huge tablespoons of salt.”

Other than simply publishing the poll numbers under a banner which screamed “PACK OF LIES”, what more could possibly be expected to warn readers that the information they were receiving had not been fact-checked to death and should be viewed as potentially suspect?

Drudge is still here--and he's got lots of competition--which means that the legacy media can't embargo stories anymore--or invent them unopposed from whole cloth.

Needless to say, they are not happy to be living in the 21st century.