[quote=SD Realtor]By the same token I do not view the Madison NBC News as a blog or racially motivated posting board. They used the term “beatings” when discussing the witnesses reports. The WIsonsin State Journal did not, they used the words attacks, the ABC affiliate WISN quoted police saying that “One officer described it as a “mob beating”…

So while you want to attribute the whole thing to every blog and forum you read misrepresenting what really happened, I am not so sure that this is accurate. So yes groupspeak and all that does exist and it goes in both directions. [/quote]

I’m a little confused by your post, and I’m sorry if I didn’t make mine more clear. I certainly didn’t mean to imply that I looked at every message board. The point that I was trying to make was that I found what I considered to be adequate and responsible reporting on the incident from the mainstream media on the first day after. Around the same time, my search turned up many (and I do mean “many”) websites, all of a similar sociopolitical persuasion and tone, that were reporting that the attacks were racially-motivated, and were circulating the identical “report” that featured the eyewitness statements. When the next round of mainstream news reports came out, it appeared that they were reacting to what had been circulating on those sites (and, quite possibly, to reports from their own viewers/readers who had seen them). At that time, they mentioned that the issue of racial motivation had been raised, and they asked that anyone having eyewitness accounts of this contact them. They also quoted the police chief as saying the evidence, THUS FAR, had not shown racial motivation. He, too, asked eyewitnesses to come forward.

My overall point is that the internet has become the primary and definitive news source for a very large number of people, who are actually listening/seeing stuff generated and maintained by rumor mills. And they use these “news reports” as EVIDENCE that the mainstream media is not doing its job, and that they are arbitrarily suppressing stories, or certain facts in stories, to affect the political course in this country. Because, as everyone knows, the mainstream media (except for Fox News) is biased. And they are ALL liberal.

BTW, to all who believe that, here’s an interesting fact: many of the reporters may be of a liberal bent, but most of the publishers and owners of mainstream media are conservative. So what does that tell you, America?