WaPo: Just The Dumb "Scott Thomas" Letters, Please!

Given that this letter to the editor will likely also be published in the dead tree version of today's paper, would anyone care to speculate as to how this adds anything to the Scott Thomas Beauchamp story, apart from delivering a wholly uninformed and mostly undeserved swipe at bloggers? And for the record, here's what the Kurtz piece actually said. Were "Peggy Robin" to read a few blogs, she might come to find out a great many of them are not written anonymously.

"Beauchamp's writing was challenged by the Weekly Standard and conservative bloggers"

today via the WaPo - link at top:

'Who Are You?' Anonymous Asks

How ironic: In a column reporting doubts about the veracity of a pseudonymous New Republic columnist, Howard Kurtz quoted an anonymous blogger ["Bloggers Raise Red Flags Over New Republic's 'Baghdad Diarist,' " July 21].

What made this unknown blogger a voice to be trusted and given space to attack someone else's credibility? The New Republic's editors at least knew the identity of the writer who had been using the name "Scott Thomas," a soldier who, since Mr. Kurtz's report, has identified himself as Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp.

Those who sought to challenge the New Republic writer's credibility should have been held to some minimum standard of credibility themselves. At very least, the blogger should have been asked to reveal his or her name and location to Mr. Kurtz, who then presumably would have been able to judge whether he or she had any expertise or standing to call into question the "Scott Thomas" reports from Iraq.

PEGGY ROBIN

Washington

Comments

[Guy Montag]

Perhaps 'Peggy Robin' might want to take a peek at what a New Republic Associate Editor can do to source material?
http://slashdot.org/~GMontag/journal/141058
The term Fairbanksing did not come from just one brush with subjects who objected to that style.

[Dusty]

Dan, you are referencing the wrong Kurtz piece. You want this one:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/27/AR2007072700037.html

Your point is about the same, though. In the Kurtz article you did link there is no anonymous blogger quoted. In the one Peggy Robin refers to, Kurtz does not, either, but he does quote a blog commenter. Peggy does not know the difference, and while she is likely right that Kurtz didn't know the blogger's name the comment itself is credible just by what he wrote.

[Dusty]

Ha, now I linked the wrong one too. UGH

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/20/AR2007072002180.html

There we go.

[memomachine]

Hmmmm.

Are we still waiting for TNR?

What's taking so bloody long?