Blah, Blah, Blah

Thankfully, the New York Times -- the proud employer of Judith Miller, David Brooks and the semi-retired William Safliar -- has decided to give bloggers the benefit of its wisdom on the matter of blogger ethics. The job falls to Adam Cohen (not to be confused, with "Randy Cohen, The Ethicist," the NYT's full-time, irrelevant ethics columnist). Adam Cohen writes:

"But more bloggers, and blog readers, are starting to ask whether at least the most prominent blogs with the highest traffic shouldn't hold themselves to the same high standards to which they hold other media."

Oh. High traffic bloggers.

Never mind.

"Many bloggers make little effort to check their information[....]"

You mean information like "more bloggers, and blog readers, are starting to ask whether at least the most prominent blogs with the highest traffic shouldn't hold themselves to the same high standards to which they hold other media?" How exactly did you quantify that, Ad-man?

"[They] think nothing of posting a personal attack without calling the target first - or calling the target at all."

"Hello, Mister Cohen, I'm thinking of calling you a hack and a twat. Care to comment?"

"They rarely have procedures for running a correction."

Here's my procedure, in full: "Like many aggressive bloggers, particularly bloggers who deal with contentious subjects, I have sometimes stepped on toes, but that is hardly grounds for rebuke. That was my assessment of myself when I worked with myself before, and nothing I have published on this blog since I became executive editor has caused me to think less of myself. It's a little galling to watch myself being pursued by some of these armchair media ethicists who have never written a blog or earned the right to carry my laptop, if I owned a laptop. So piss off."

"The wall between their editorial content and advertising is often nonexistent."

What's that you say, Melinda and Melinda Cohen?

"And bloggers rarely disclose whether they are receiving money from the people or causes they write about."

Fair enough. I'm not getting a cent from Dick Dasen. You couldn't pay me to accept money from him.

Forgive me, Adam, but I haven't found Miller's 1099s -- or yours -- on the NYT website. E-mail me copies and I'll send you mine by return e-post.