Whooo boy! I think we're really into one of those great media feuds with both sides hardening their positions and no end in sight. It's the seemingly-neverending new media versus old media debate but the battlelines are growing sharper.
Today's version comes from John McQuaid writing in the Huffington Post. He sums up the flap started by Jeff Bercovici writing about the Internet reports of the Quran burning, and he extends the discussion into the whole role of aggragators -- like Huffington Post.
What may be more fun, even is somewhat less enlightening, is a listing in New York magazine's online site of the Twitter battle between Bercovici and two other writers he's attacked: Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen. (Note: profanity used here.)
Frankly, Bercovici's central premise attributing the report to a student without direction was wrong. The student posted at the request of an old media news agency on that agency with, presumably, editing. But the point about crowdsourcing and ethical considerations is worth making. Anybody can start a blog or a website. It can operate without any ethical consideration at all. This has always been true in old media (go to a bookstore and look at the "current affairs" section or watch Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann or the Sunday morning political shows for totally unsupported, outrageous if not fully false claims), but the Internet allows faster and wider consumption of that drek, so the current discussion is worth following.
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