EAGER TO DIVERT ATTENTION from the incredible incompetence displayed in the handling of Eason Jordan’s remarks before the Davos audience (and Jordan’s November 2004 accusation that the U.S. military was torturing journalists), a number of voices within the mainstream media have argued that the credentials of bloggers are suspect and that in their amateurism there lays a danger to the public discussion. The most surprising of these attacks came in an unsigned editorial in the Wall Street Journal. The Journal chose to ignore Jordan’s November 2004 accusation about the American military torturing journalists, and pronounced the Davos pratfall as less than a “hanging offense.” That’s a fair opinion, though one with which many reasonably disagree.

But the Journal also uncharacteristically slashed at the new media as “amateurs” from the “Internet and talk-show crew,” and contrasted “the good judgment and sense of proportion that distinguishes professional journalism from the enthusiasms and vendettas of amateurs.” The writer also asserted that those within the Journal‘s walls “make grown-up decisions” which, he believes, bloggers don’t.