PressEthic

The news of Rumsfeld's resignation today was somewhat shocking but was (surprisingly) predicted late last night by a contributor on Comedy Central's blog .

At 12:15 a.m. this morning Michael Brendan Dougherty, an Assistant Editor at The American Conservative and CC's "Token Conservative " for their election blog, theorized that Rumsfeld's resignation was on the next day's agenda.

The buzz I'm hearing from a friend, and a totally unconfirmed White House source (remember Comedy Central doesn't have journalistic standards), is that Rumsfeld will be out of the administration tomorrow.

This is a shocker even to the totally unnamed source in the White House. Already, we are seeing reports of a White House Press conference scheduled for tomorrow at 1 p.m. Could this be it?

It was, in fact, "it," and while politicians and editorials have been advocating this move for weeks, I don't know that many people expected President Bush to take action.

The fact that it was 1) a blog and 2) Comedy Central that broke this news is noteworthy.

Did the mainstream media get scooped? Is this a story that they should have picked up, or would it have been irresponsible to report on such an unconfirmed speculation? As bloggers become increasingly credible sources of news, does the mainstream media have a responsibility to publish these theories as well?

It would seem that the answer to this question is "no," as their primary goal should be to publish news and not speculation. However, in the debate about the dwindling markets for print and broadcast media, this might be yet another reason to deem traditional news sources less viable than those online.