Salon readers defend Media Whores Online and its style. It's clear that a lot of MWO fans read Salon, and most of them didn't care much for this article.

Meanwhile Atrios responds to my previous thoughts about MWO and its tactics. He makes a lot of good points, as does Avedon Carol, who wrote in the comments "If it didn't work, we wouldn't be hearing about MWO all of a sudden. Consortium News has been doing careful, measured articles for a long time and you don't hear their name in the media at all."

I'll say again that I'm glad someone is doing this. It clearly needed to be done. I still wish it could be done in a less strident way, but I can't argue with success. It's interesting to me that sites like MWO, BuzzFlash and the Daily Howler have gained a lot of traction since the 2000 election. We've heard "the liberal media" and "liberal media bias" tossed around so much in conservative circles that it's nearly become conventional wisdom despite all the evidence that there's plenty of non-liberal media and media bias. Perhaps now that such sites have started fighting back we might hope to change some perceptions. If that happens, then I'll retract all my doubts and equivocations about MWo and its ilk.

On a side note, Atrios printed an email he got from Jennifer Liberto prior to the Salon article, in which she tried to find some sources to interview. I expect there to be more on this, so stay tuned.