IN BLOGGERS WE TRUST NO MATTER WHERE YOU STAND, THERE'S A POLITICAL WEB SITE FOLLOWING EVERY BIT OF SPIN.

Byline: David Kronke Television Writer

As the rancorous 2004 presidential campaign concludes, the mainstream media has found itself beleaguered by attacks of its coverage from both conservatives and liberals who have taken matters into their own hands on the Internet.

Largely through weblogs - commonly called blogs - self-styled pundits have offered perspective and critiques on media coverage of the campaign, and occasionally they've wrested control of the coverage from the TV news networks and major newspapers. And they do so with a passion and energy that some mainstream journalists find daunting.

``Passion's the right word - there's a passion behind blogging activity that's missing from mainstream journalism, which has been sanitized to a large extent,'' says David Brock, who runs mediamatters.org, a liberal site dedicated to correcting TV-news reporting errors.

``Bloggers are much more skeptical of coverage in the mainstream press and more willing to criticize it and mobilize against it,'' adds Brock, a former conservative pundit who left the fold and has written books that include the recent ``The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How it Corrupts Democracy.''

``What's new is that anybody with rudimentary Web skills can start their own newspaper,'' notes Michael Totten, a contributor to instapundit.com, considered by many to be the best conservative commentary site on the Internet, as well as his own blog (michaeltotten.com). ``In the blogosphere, Glenn Reynolds (a Tennessee-based professor who created instapundit.com) has his own printing press. In the past, those who controlled information were a small number of people - until the printing press came along. And now with blogs, that's exponentially true.''

``The idea that we're taking on the mainstream media is funny,'' Totten adds. ``We're largely dependent on the media to collect information. It's primarily in the area of opinion where we compete.''

Neck-deep in 'experts'

``What astounds me is that there are so many people out there with specific expertise and insight on the different issues,'' agrees Jim Bass of Thousand Oaks, who runs the conservative site attackmachine.com (its name plays wryly off a complaint from John Kerry; its home page is adorned by images of kittens, alleviating its alleged bite).

``It's a gold mine, whether you're conservative or liberal,'' Bass says of the legion of political blogs. ``They give you things to think about - commentary, shared insights, policy arguments to be hashed out. It's a great advance. There's so much special knowledge that blogs let you tap into. They bring it all together - it's like a great magazine delivered into your computer six times a day.''

In this particularly polarized election, many critics have watched dumbfounded as TV news networks have tiptoed around the issues. Driven by the need to produce profits, TV journalists have struck many on both sides as peculiarly timid in their reporting. Their main objective has seemed to be not to offend either side of this partisan battle rather than to provide context and perspective.

By contrast, bloggers on both sides, understanding the stakes as they pertain to America's future, seek to clarify the issues.

``Some bloggers are very concerned with the country's present, which means that they are more concerned with the country's future,'' says New Yorker TV critic Nancy Franklin. ``They are useful watchdogs.''

They get it first

And as Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, creator of dailykos.com, one of the nation's most influential liberal blogs, notes, ``We're not crack investigative reporters spending weeks on this. We find the errors or contradictions and provide clear information after just five minutes on Google. The media claims to be purveyors of truth, but it's clear they are not. Across ideological boundaries, over and over again, they're failing us.''

Therefore, bloggers correct the record, or offer reportage of their own. Here are just a few examples of the way online activists have insinuated themselves into this election year's fracas.

--Most famously, conservative bloggers discerned, within hours of Dan Rather's CBS report about President Bush allegedly going AWOL from the National Guard during the Vietnam War, that the documents used to bolster the claim were forgeries. Naturally, big media was displeased: NBC's Tom Brokaw, at a symposium in New York attended by all three broadcast-network anchors, decried a ``political jihad against Dan Rather and CBS News that is quite outrageous.''

Humiliated, CBS folded, announcing it would withhold a report on the White House's own use of forged documents about Iraq's efforts to acquire uranium until after the election, which consequently upset liberals. At that symposium, Rather described partisan pressures applied to the media: ``Once we give up that fight, we give up something that's important not only to journalism but also important to the country.'' (The network is withholding comment until after an investigation into its errors.)

--When Sinclair Broadcast Group, which had earlier declined to air an episode of ``Nightline'' listing the names of American soldiers killed in Iraq, announced its intentions to air an anti-Kerry documentary, mediamatters.org urged liberals to remove Sinclair stock from their mutual funds. After its value dropped significantly, Sinclair aired an edited version of the anti-Kerry film with excerpts of a pro-Kerry documentary and a report on how contentious this year's election had become.

--Virginia Congressman Ed Schrock, co-author of the Federal Marriage Amendment banning gay marriages, resigned his position after a gay activist posted online audio of the congressman soliciting a gay sex phone line.

--Mississippi Republican Trent Lott relinquished his impending position as Senate majority leader when the ABC News inside-baseball blog, the Note (click on it at abcnews.go.com/Politics), ran his quote praising Strom Thurmond's segregationist views. More recently, Matt Drudge, whose drudgereport.com fairly initiated the art of online activism with his scoop about Monica Lewinsky's stained dress, posted an internal memo from ABC's Mark Halperin, creator of the Note, that seemed to favor Kerry:

``Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and mistakes (sic) all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win. We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn't mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable when the facts don't warrant that,'' reads the memo.

Liberals interpreted this as an admission that the media is largely incapable of balancing innocent misstatements from the left with outright lies from the right, while conservatives pointed to the memo as further proof of liberal media bias. Neither Halperin nor anyone at ABC News agreed to speak to the Daily News; Halperin likewise declined to discuss the issue when he was profiled by the New Yorker.

Of course, these examples really only prove, as Bass says, that ``One person's truth is another person's spin. I have liberal friends who seem to live in an alternate universe, with a whole different set of facts. There's a whole lot of preaching to the choir with these blogs. The people I'd like to sway won't come within 50 mouse-clicks of my site.''

Politics that's personal

``While the fact that there are no checks on bloggers means that what you get is unfiltered,'' Franklin observes, ``there is no guarantee that their material is any more reliable than what you get in the mainstream media.

``They're not better informed than their mainstream colleagues are, but people do have easier access to them, and part of the reason they're drawn to them is that they are often a two-way street. You can e-mail these people and let off steam. You can't, on the other hand, e-mail Dan Rather and have a conversation with him.''

Which suggests a reason blogs resonate more than anyone would ever expect: All we want is an opportunity to connect with those who understand and value our opinions.

But while many bloggers express the hope that future elections will be less divisive, dailykos.com's Moulitsas suggests otherwise. ``Those who say the blogs will fade away after the election fail to understand that this is not the end of the partisan war,'' he says. ``Tuesday is a major battle in the war, but it will continue after that.''

Totten is more optimistic that centrists like Republican Sen. John McCain and Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman will prevail in the future, erasing such vitriol.

``It'd be a nice change, I think, to run someone from the perspective of a centrist. It'd be good for everybody.

David Kronke, [phone]

david.kronke(at)dailynews.com

Blog, counterblog

Here's a very short list of a few of the weblogs and other partisan sites not mentioned in the story that are ranting - and even offering measured insights - on the country's current political divisiveness; some even invite you to join the discourse. The list is short because these all offer links to many, many other blogs, so be prepared to spend hours glued to your computer screen.

CONSERVATIVE BLOGS

www.blogsforbush.com Numerous contributors offer their thoughts on political affairs.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com Rounds up pro-Bush news stories from around the world; lively discussion threads.

http://www.beautifulatrocities.com Witty commentary ranging from politics to pop culture.

http://www.scrappleface.com Onion-style absurdist news stories mocking the Kerry campaign.

LIBERAL BLOGS

www.talkingpointsmemo.com Responses to news as it happens. Broke the story about the Fox News Web site carrying a negative and fictitious Kerry story.

www.lowculture.com See Beautiful Atrocities above.

www.the-hamster.com News, links and more links to just about every other Web page on the Internet.

www.whitehouse.org Vitriolic parody of the real White House Web site.

SOMEWHERE-IN-BETWEEN BLOGS

www.wonkette.com Inside-the-Beltway gossip, cheekily dispensed.

http://factcheck.org Journalism-college site corrects lies and misstatements made by politicians of both parties.

http://iraqblogcount.blogspot.com Offers links to 80-plus accounts of life these days in Iraq.

- D.K.

CAPTION(S):

2 drawings, box

Drawing:

(1 -- cover) How bloggers are shaping the news and political landscapes

(2) Blog nation

Jon Gerung/Staff Artist

Box:

Blog, counterblog (see text)