Tell Me What You Really Think

OK, I am already probably the last blogger on the planet to link to Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan's hot-mike embarrassment, but it's too good not to. They now have something in common with Jesse Jackson!

1. Note to cable-news guests: Until they unclip that mike from you, assume that it is on.

2. More seriously, there are a million explanations people give for why new media are competing with the old media, but this illustrates a basic one: say whatever you want about blogs, people generally believe that bloggers write what they actually think. This clubby attitude of having one public story you give on TV and the "real story" you save for your friends and cronies is, politics aside, one of the most damaging faults of the MSM, and rightly so.

[Update: Scott Rosenberg said it first.]