> You ask for what protections a blog has? Its protection is that it's a darn blog on the internet just like any random person can make. It has no authority, as

> You ask for what protections a blog has? Its protection is that it's a darn blog on the internet just like any random person can make. It has no authority, asks for no special recognition. Except in a universe where there are no news organizations and only blogs, then blogs will naturally attain a similar amount of influence, but with even fewer checks and balances, and probably lesser liability/responsibility. This is just a natural consequence of the graph-theoretic properties of social networks. If we agree that the media started the war (just for the sake of argument), then yes, it does count, it seriously counts and it counts for a lot. But you've selected one of the most extreme examples, in a sea of otherwise unremarkable examples. When we talk about an org's track record, we're not hoping to find zero mistakes: we're really hoping to find relatively few mistakes, and accountability and recognition of important mistakes. Also perhaps a self-correction mechanism. I'm not saying any of that is perfect, but legitimate news orgs do have some of that.