The double negative

The double negative

: Armando at Daily Kos gets all bitchy at Jay Rosen for praising Dan Okrent. Dan’s sin, as near as I can tell, is that he dared to see the side of the critics of the liberal newspaper and criticize the paper too much — except as it refers to coverage of the runup to Iraq, in which he didn’t criticize the paper enough (note that he didn’t try; he didn’t deal with things that came before his time).

Kos is true to form and true to its own mission: It is an advocacy site that sees the world through it’s blue lenses. Rosen, on the other hand, is a media criticism site and he sees the world through his green eyeshade.

There’s also this little gem:

And Rosen has a lot to say about Jayson Blair. But this line was particularly stupid to me:

Ultimately Daniel Okrent will have had more influence on the New York Times than the notorious Jayson Blair.

I mean really. Jayson Blair was a third string reporter, how much influence did Jayson Blair have on the Times?

Well, Jayson Blair caused the firing of the two top editors at The New York Times and the hiring of aforementioned public editor and two major, profession-changing reports from The Times on improving the professionalism and trust of journalism. I won’t stoop to Armando’s level and call what he says “particularly stupid,” but I will call it clueless.