Blogwatch: Mar. 20, 2006

Bloggers are proud to be the mainstream media’s fact-checking gadflies, but last week they were the ones being checked. The New York Times reported that recent posts lambasting legislation against Wal-Mart came verbatim from the retailer’s p.r. firm. The right-wing IOWA VOICE pleaded guilty but said he was sent “links to news articles [that] we would have found anyway.” Lefty media monitor SNARKAHOLIC retorted that the bloggers were “too stupidly egotistical to know the difference between a press release and [an] exclusive source,” while politiblog FIREDOGLAKE decried Wal-Mart’s “corporate propaganda.”