Gate Keeper Missing in Action

From the unfortunately named Casper (WY) Star-Tribune (and heard on the Hugh Hewitt show), a report on the credibility of the mainstream media:

What started out as a bogus news release written as an April Fool's joke by Afton outfitter Maury Jones has turned up as fact in the media -- unfortunately, for the second time.

On its front page Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times wrote about continuing resistance to wolves in the greater Yellowstone area. Staff writer Julie Cart quoted from Jones' tongue-in-cheek release titled "Wyoming Governor tells feds to go to Hell."

Los Angeles Times deputy metro editor David Lauter called the error unfortunate. "We hate when this kind of thing happens, and we correct it as quickly as we can," he said.

Don't you hate it when you publish complete falsehoods on the front page of a major American newspaper? That can be so annoying!

I think now is a good time to recall the dire warnings about blogs delivered by the Pioneer Press yesterday:

Along with partisanship, credibility is another problem for blogs. There's nothing in the First Amendment about the need for an editor. Bloggers can write anything they want; they can spout fact or fiction. [U of MN Professor] Larry Jacobs advises readers to beware: "There's no gatekeeping here."

And there's nothing in the First Amendment about the need for an editor who doesn't have his head up his rear end either. The point being, mistakes happen. Pretending that the MSM has a better record in this regard than the blogs (at least those that take their work seriously) reveals nothing more than ignorance.

Speaking of which, here is the LA Times correction:

FOR THE RECORD:

An article in Tuesday's Section A about tensions over the federal effort to reintroduce wolves into parts of the West wrongly attributed to Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal a statement that Wyoming considered the Endangered Species Act no longer in force and "now considers the wolf as a federal dog." The statement, which was circulated on the Internet, was purportedly from Freudenthal but was in fact a hoax.

I knew it, that darn Internet is to blame after all! Bloggers, I beseech you, stop circulating hoaxes, before the LA Times is forced to publish them again.