30 Dec. Real Clear Politics Op-Ed - WaPo's Preemptive Strike Against Bill Roggio.

It was the journalistic equivalent of a drive-by shooting. The targets of Washington Post reporters Jonathan Finer and Doug Struck were two of journalism's favorites: Web loggers and the U.S. military.

"Bloggers, Money, Now Weapons in Information War," read the headline over their story, which appeared last Monday. "U.S. Recruits Advocates to the Front, Pays Iraqi TV Stations for Coverage," the subhed said.

"Retired soldier Bill Roggio was a computer technician living in New Jersey less than two months ago when a Marine officer half a world away made him an offer he couldn't refuse," the story began.

The insinuation of the headline and the lead is that Mr. Roggio was recruited and paid by the Marines to write favorable things about military operations in Iraq.

Drive-by shootings are notoriously inaccurate, and the story by Mr. Finer and Mr. Struck, which ran last Monday, contained so many errors it should be an embarrassment to the Washington Post...

Journalists don't like bloggers because they fact-check journalists. Bloggers like Bill Roggio and Michael Yon, a former Special Forces soldier who embedded with a Stryker battalion in Mosul, expand the threat posed by the new media. They're reporting news, and doing it better than "professional" journalists are.

Messrs. Finer and Struck weren't reporting news when they slimed Bill Roggio. They were launching a preemptive strike against a new, but increasingly muscular, competitor.
The SWJ / SWC contributed a small ammount to Bill prior to his trip and we are glad we did.