There are some takeaways from Think Progress’ discredited accusation of plagiarism against McCain, and they apply to more than just the folks at that site.

The first thing to learn is that searching Google for an answer shouldn’t qualify as due diligence when accusing someone of misdeed. In a comment on the post after it was learned that the accusation was completely wrong, 5th Estate had this to say:

The link provided in the update did not appear to show up in my specific Google search. I didn’t notice any link to McCain’s website in the returns I got from Google–they all appeared to be general blog posts and reiterations of the words relating to the latest Mar 29 2007 speech.

Now if you advance search the phrase, there are 371 links ( I just tried it). I guess I though checking 50 out of a hundred possible source constituted due diligence. Apparently not. I didn’t present my original research as irrefutable fact, but rather a high probaability that deserved further investigation.

I think that anyone who might imagine themselves to be a journalist (citizen or otherwise) might realize that doing a Google search isn’t enough when you’re accusing someone of plagiarism. After doing the initial checks, these folks should have called the McCain campaign and asked for an explanation. That might have saved a good bit of embarrassment.

The second thing to realize is that extreme partisanship and an urge to get the big story before someone else does leads to bad decisions. It was a bad decision to make these accusations before properly exploring the information and that’s a caution to all of us. This isn’t just about bloggers--the New York Times and the LA Times have had similar problems in recent months, which, to its credit, the LA Times owned up to their mistakes.

Drudge makes a living off of linking the “breaking” news before it’s been properly vetted--Edwards’ supposed affair leaps to mind--and writing often mildly misleading headlines for his links. With the exception of the traffic and the money, though, I don’t imagine most of us want to emulate him in the least. Unfortunately, when we try to get that big, shocking story first instead of getting it right, all we’re doing is a sort of long form of precisely the same thing that Drudge is doing. Or, if you prefer, we’re doing precisely what 60 Minutes did when it failed to properly vet the documents and sources of the accusations in the Bush - Texas Air National Guard story that it ran in 2004.

I know I’ve been caught at least once saying something that I later had to retract, but that was during the last presidential election cycle. When I wrote a few articles for publication this year--the ones I actually got paid for, although unfortunately for a publication that doesn’t seem to have survived--I did everything I could to get the story right even to the point of leaving out certain things when I couldn’t find documentary evidence to support what I thought I knew. It weakened my story in one instance, but I knew that I wouldn’t have to apologize for something that proved to be incorrect.

What Think Progress did was to make an easy mistake. To their credit, the people involved have apologized and taken responsibility, but mistakes like this damage credibility. I’m trying to internalize this lesson so that I don’t have to find myself in their place, apologizing for something because I was too eager to get the story up and not eager enough to find out if my words were correct.

As an aside, for the first time in a couple years, I picked up a Sunday Denver Post a few weeks ago. I was shocked at just how slim, just how truly bad, the newspaper had become. All the talk of the demise of newspapers finally hit home and I realized it was true: newspaper journalism is dying a slow death in the United States. This made me wonder a couple things

First, where will people be getting their news ten years from now? Consolidated regional newspapers instead of local papers? Fragmented TV news at the local level? Blogs and talk radio (I shudder at the thought)? News Web sites that don’t carry the same financial burdens as their print counterparts and are able to react more quickly to breaking news? Or do most Americans just want to tune out, go to work, and vote their biases without having to think too much about the process?

Second, where will all the journalists go? The job opportunities in traditional journalism must be shrinking drastically right now. I’d hate to be in that field; it has to be something like being an autoworker in Detroit right now. Ugly.