Journalism has changed forever. Two of the world's most prominent news organizations have been forced to retract material and eat humble pie, thanks to the debunking of internet journalists. Spotting anomalies and, in spontaneously self—organized fashion, combing through the evidence and applying expertise, within a few hours dispositive evidence of outright fraud has been offered to the world. Twice. A pattern is established:

After exploding for about 24 hours on the internet, and being denied by the purveyors, the scandal reaches talk radio in the United States. With millions of informed listeners asking awkward questions, the mainstream media takes up the issue. Eventually, the fraud is withdrawn by its original sponsors.

The prestige of the world's major media players continues to plummet, even as a raft of new internet—based competitors eats away at their audience and advertising base. Take a look at the stock price performance of any big American newspaper publisher to see the results.

Dan Rather of CBS News lost much of his remaining luster and later his job over the phony memorandum he and his network peddled