It's great when the mainstream media catches up to what we read and write on DailyKos, although it usually takes a day or two. That's exactly what happened this week.
First, a bit of background. Most of you probably remember the brouhaha that followed New York Times Public Editor Arthur Brisbane's question about whether the paper should be a "truth vigilante," i.e., whether it should actually, you know, point out when public figures were lying or misleading.
It seems that, since then, the Times may have started to act on its readers' responses, which were a resounding "YES!"
We have seen some examples of this shift, I wrote about one here, when the Times pointed out the truth about Newt Gingrich's lines/lies regarding President Obama and food stamps.
Yesterday, our own Jed Lewison published two front page posts documenting lies that Mitt Romney has told about President Obama. One discussed Romney's lies about Obama and light bulb regulations (which were actually passed under GW Bush), the other focused on Romney lying about Obama having said that he wanted gas prices to go up.
The title of Jed's second diary above had two parts: "Mitt Romney lies, media continues to ignore it." The second part is no longer true.
The NYT published this article on its website yesterday (Monday), and published a similar but more in-depth article in the print version today (Tuesday). The titles are a bit different, the web title was: "Romney Misleads on Obama and Energy Prices," and that is a bit stronger than the print title: "Obama Energy Policies Differ From Romney's Portrayal." The print article explored a number of Romney statements, casting its net wider than did the web article.
The point is that the text of the articles included discussions of exactly the lies Jed analyzed in his two Dkos posts. From the print version (which has a bit more in this quote than the web version):
In a television interview on Sunday and a Web video released on Monday, Mitt Romney said that President Obama has sought higher gasoline and energy prices and called on the president to dismiss three cabinet officers Mr. Romney claims have abetted him.
But the assertion, which echoes charges from other Republicans, is largely unsubstantiated or misleading, as are other statements Mr. Romney has made in recent days about Obama administration policies.
The article goes into detail and does a quite good job of pointing out many of the same facts as did our friend Mr. Lewison.
This is definitely a positive development. If Mr. Romney comes to be branded as a liar by the media (as he should be, given his record in recent months), that obviously would damage his campaign. Equally important, the NYT may well be realizing that it needs to be a truth vigilante. Finally, the work being done on Dailykos is having an ever-growing impact on the media.
I'm sure this is one example where Jed was happy to be proven wrong after the fact.