In a New York Times op-ed, former Obama administration official Van Jones criticized how "[p]artisan Web sites and pundits pounced" on the bogus Shirley Sherrod controversy, writing that “news organizations, and partisans posing as news organizations” have “cross[ed] the line from responsible reporting to dangerous rumor-mongering.”

From Jones' July 25 op-ed, headlined “Shirley Sherrod and Me”:

The imperative to immediately and constantly churn out news on even the most minor bit of controversy leads news organizations, and partisans posing as news organizations, to cross the line from responsible reporting to dangerous rumor-mongering.

This is exactly what happened to Ms. Sherrod. Andrew Breitbart, a prominent Internet conservative, promoted a misleadingly edited video of her speech; within hours, news outlets of all stripes were promoting it as truth. The White House and N.A.A.C.P. both overreacted, then back-pedaled with egg on their faces. But they are victims, too. The only real winners were Mr. Breitbart and his colleagues, whose Web hits probably numbered in the millions.

Anyone with a laptop and a flip camera can engineer a fake info-virus and inject it into the body politic. Those with cable TV shows and axes to grind can concoct their own realities. The high standards and wise judgments of people like Walter Cronkite once acted as our national immune system, zapping scandal-mongers and quashing wild rumors. As a step toward further democratizing America, we shrunk those old gatekeepers -- and ended up weakening democracy's defenses. Rapidly developing communication technologies did the rest.