Is the "Blogosphere" a big game of Telephone?

[Bobblehead]

You know that game played at kids parties, where one person whispers something to one person, and so on, until the last person says what they heard; which is totally different than the original message?

I was reading Fark today. The description of the link was "The RIAA has a SWAT team to help rid the U S of DJs and their mix tapes"
So I followed the link.
The website, called Techdirt, was a type of news aggregator. The title of its article was "Make Mix Tapes And The RIAA May Send A SWAT Team To Bust Down Your Door?" In the article, one line linked to the source article

Apparently a federal SWAT team "assisted" the RIAA in raiding the studio of a DJ in Atlanta.

That link goes to a website called "The Technology Liberation Front". Their article, which was the source of the Techdirt article, was called, "SWAT Teams Enforcing Copyright". Now this article has as its lead sentence

Radley Balko, who has tirelessly publicized the problems created by the promiscuous use of SWAT teams, reports that federal police in Atlanta have used a SWAT team to help the recording industry enforce copyright law

Now this has 2 links in it. One to a magazine called "Reason", the other to another blog called "Idolator". And if you go to the Reason article (called "SWAT Meets Copyright") it actually links to the same "Idolator" article.

The Idolator post is titled "DJ Drama Gets Raided By The Feds". In it it says.

Atlanta's Fox 5 reports that a police SWAT team in conjunction with RIAA anti-piracy agents raided DJ Drama's Gangsta Grillz recording studio earlier today and arrested both he and fellow Aphilliate Don Cannon on piracy charges. The ramifications of something like this are potentially pretty huge for high profile mixtape DJ's.

So now the original news report is finally used as the reference! It comes from the Atlanta Fox affiliate and is titled "Downtown Raid Nets Illegal CDs" and says,

A metro law enforcement task force raided a downtown Atlanta recording studio Tuesday night. Investigators say they confiscated tens of thousands of bootleg cd's made for sale on the internet.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also has the story.

Clayton and Fulton Sheriff's Deputies and Morrow police confiscated more than 81,000 CD's, four vehicles, recording gear and other items in a raid on their Walker Street offices in Atlanta Tuesday night.

About 17 employees were in the process of packaging materials for shipping via UPS and other sources when police entered the warehouse, Baker said.

Now whether or not you agree with the charges or not, this original story is a long way from "The RIAA has a SWAT team to help rid the U S of DJs and their mix tapes"

Blogs have become a great way to get information the traditional news agencies can't or don't want to cover, but this is just a reminder that blogs also go through a lot of echo chambers and filtering.

[Looger]

wouldn't know, i've been able to stay away from the 'blogosphere' for all non-fatuous ends.

there's plenty of alternative news sites that aren't 'blogs', as in they aren't just hyperlinks to other blogs - they're hyperlinks to the mainstream media.

stuff like http://www.prisonplanet.com for instance, or http://www.waynemadsenreport.com or http://www.falseflagnews.com all have direct links to stories in reuters (mostly wire services), bbc, the guardian, etc.