Attention WTNH reporter Mark Davis...

you can learn something from this guy.

What is it about the Internet that makes some political pundits, columnists and reporters so goofy? It seems like almost every time I read a mainstream media story about political Web sites and bloggers, the pieces are full of ill-informed junk.

Remember back in August when Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman's campaign Web site crashed the night before primary day? Lieberman claimed that his site had been hacked by his Democratic primary opponent, Ned Lamont, and his outrageous charge was bought wholeheartedly by just about every political reporter and commentator in the country.

Just a little bit of checking would have revealed that Lieberman had failed to buy enough Internet bandwidth to handle the election traffic. But the almost nonstop cable news coverage focused solely on Lieberman's call for a federal investigation of the Lamont campaign. The newspaper coverage wasn't much better.

Well, the feds and the state attorney general just concluded their investigations. Lieberman's site wasn't hacked. Intense national interest in the antiwar Lamont challenge had simply overwhelmed Lieberman's pathetic Web site. Once again, the media got it badly wrong, and, for the most part, reporters haven't yet bothered to correct the record. A search of Google News yesterday found around 10 stories about Lamont's exoneration, and almost all of those were from Connecticut media sources.

Mark Davis was the king of misinformation throughout the entire primary with his over-the-top reporting and infamous outrageous softball questions he threw at Joe Lieberman. For all the horrible writing and reporting from the local news media (for the exception of FOX-61), the shoddy reporting from a person who claims to be a chief political reporter was not only ridiculous, but an insult (as well as a disservice) to the public at large.

Where's Davis' hard-core reporting now, he and the other locals drank the kool-aid over the so-called Lieberman hacking story and when bloggers pointed to the fact that Lieberman's 50 hits a day site actually went down because he was too cheap to get a good ISP, the media went silent.

NOW, after the truth comes out in an investigation, which was a complete WASTE OF TIME, the local media is no where to be found.

When will we see Davis, Sue Haigh, and the rest of the local crew finally question Lieberman over the validity of his original claim that bloggers hacked his site? While you're at it, can we get ONE reporter follow-up on the 387,000 in COLD HARD petty cash Lieberman dished out on the streets right before the primary? Or maybe follow-up of the woman from Hartford who was passing out absentee ballots throughout the North-end although she was "fined $10,000 in July 2005 and ordered not to distribute absentee ballot applications or to assist voters with the ballots for two years, after the State Elections Enforcement Commission found that she had forged a voter's signature in the 2004 election." (Courant, Oct 10 2006).

I'm still waiting but I'm not holding my breath.

(Hat tip to Maura)