Michael Hiltzik's follow-up to last week's critique of media critic types in the blogosphere can be found here. He seems to have generated a great deal of heat, if not a lot in careful rebuttal. While he goes overboard when he ascertains motives to others (ironically, since his targets base most of their obsessive behavior on proscribing ideological motives to journalists), and he seems to have no problem ignoring the same problems when they occur on the left, the reaction to his post does seem to indicate that certain bloggers have a problem when the factchecking spotlight is focused on them.

Those who pore over every front-page article, cherrypicking any picayune example of ideological bias (such as whether an item of news is placed on page one, or inside the paper), are engaged in an attempt to subvert journalism, whether they do so from the right or left. To use the analogy Eric Alterman is so fond of, they are playing the role of a coach who paces the sideline, constantly yelling and getting in the face of the ref, in the hope they can plant a seed that will lead to a more favorable call later in the game. Whatever "working the ref" is, it's not designed to produce a fairer or better officiated game. And particularly since conservatives holds the reigns of power at almost every level of our society, any effort to mau-mau journalists into putting government spin on an equal billing with objective fact will fundamentally limit all of our freedoms.

What Hiltzik did here was to apply objective analysis to the task of reviewing the work of a blogger. The hysterical reaction from the right is a sign that the blogosphere is not ready to deal with constructive criticism, or even a factchecker.