things seem to be getting out of hand.

still no rove indictment. one journalist's already checkered career may be irreparably damaged. his sponsor's reputation sways in the wind. prosecutor fitzgerald remains silent. has something gone horribly wrong in the plame investigation?

one would certainly thinks so from the ballooning body of speculation overtaking the blogosphere. could all this be msnbc reporter david shuster's fault?

the ball got rolling with shuster's breathless but compelling argument made on msnbc countdown with keith olberman on may 8:

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Jason Leopold of Truthout made an unethical bet that Rove would be indicted this week.  He reported last Friday that Rove had been indicted; I'm told that his reporting didn't make any legal sense, but had Rove been indicted, Leopold would have looked like a hero.  It's very hard to criticize someone for getting a story right when they

He lost the bet.  

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Jeralyn Merritt has two excellent posts (here and here) on the Jason Leopold reporting problem.  Credibility matters.  We'll see how this plays out.  

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Most major bloggers are quite truthful; we don't put out false information and when we make mistakes we correct them.  We don't do a lot of original reporting, of course, so the burden is not that expensive.  There has been a flowering of new investigative liberal reporting over the past few years, much of it very good, on web sites like Talkingpointsmemo and Raw Story.

That said, the Rove rumors of last week were wrong.  Peter Daou put out this piece to correct the record and examine this issue.  Jason Leopold's Truthout piece on Rove being indicted did not pan out, and Daou walks you through the potential flaws in the reporting.  

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