By its very nature, the art of blogging offers a measure of freedom and reach beyond anything in the past. And because it does, it should carry with it a degree of responsibility that matches that scope and privilege. It, of course, does not. In fact, just the opposite is true, giving broad access to every nut case with a cause and permitting nearly anyone to say nearly anything about anybody, often anonymously, without a shred of proof and without fear of liability.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., already has felt that sting from an online magazine that used the fact he attended a Muslim-sponsored grade school as a 6-year-old to intimate that he had fundamentalist Islamic connections. The editor of the magazine has refused to disclose the source of the story or its author. The piece actually has been disavowed by nearly every reputable journalistic enterprise, including a respected sister print publication of the Internet magazine.

Even newspapers now seem to be experimenting with online stories that are written on a laptop by a "reporter" and immediately put online without benefit of editing. For one who has spent his entire life in the discipline of the checking and rechecking that occurs in any legitimate newspaper, I can't think of anything more dangerous and irresponsible. If that is the wave of the future in news, a free press and all it stands for may choke to death on misinformation. But, tragically, that is exactly what blogging is all about.

It is easy to predict that before this campaign is completed more than one presidential hopeful may regret the rush to the unruly world of the Internet, where the knack of making things up puts the most inventive politician to shame.

---

Dan K. Thomasson is former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service.