This is a follow up to the role of weblogs in helping to Out Trent Lott. Here is a snipit from the transcript of Reliable Sources on CNN. Some are skeptical but I'm hearing and reading more and more people recognize that the playing field has changed.
"IFILL: No, not strictly that. But what happened, I actually heard it from a white journalist.
A reporter for the note (ph) in ABC News Web log had been inside that room, had come back and had written it. It was just one mention of it, the quote.
As I was preparing the program for that night, I looked at it and thought, this strikes me as odd. And I read it aloud to a couple of other people, including Dan Ballis (ph) from the "Washington Post," Linda Greenhouse from "The New York Times," who were scheduled to be on the program that night, and their reaction was, what.
And so I thought, OK, I'm testing my instincts. It's not just me. So let's just -- but then, I thought it's not up to me to be an opinion reporter and to tell you what I think about it, but let's see what the viewers think.
We got hundreds, hundreds of e-mails from viewers saying either this was just a remark at a birthday party, in the vast minority, by the way, and many more from people saying things like I'm from Mississippi, I'm 80 years old, and I think it was outrageous. From people saying, Gwen, why don't you just say what Lott was thinking? You knew what Lott was thinking.
And the emotional outpouring is one of those hot buttons that I think only race brings up. It's the sort of thing that people react to in a way they don't about tax cuts, in they way they don't about Social Security.
And the debate was so large, just from my viewers, that I began to think there was more to it than that. And I know from talking to people at other news organizations, and especially African-American journalists, that they got it instantly. And it took a little longer, often, for the white colleagues to get it."[CNN Transcripts]
10:44:23 AM 
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