I listen to Hugh Hewitt's radio show when I get the opportunity, which honestly isn't all the time because the beginning of my work day and the beginning of Hugh's show often coincide. But I started work a little later than usual on Thursday and got the opportunity to hear Hugh interview Glenn Reynolds (aka the Instapundit who hasn't linked to me in a long time) on Glenn's new book "An Army of Davids."

Unfortunately, during this interview, and I'm sure it wasn't purposeful or malicious, Hugh and Glenn mistakenly gave the blogosphere credit for something that it deserved no credit for.

HH: Can corruption...there's this story now breaking in California, of which I've been a part about, Rob Reiner's role in his state commission on Prop. 10 mishandling $23 million dollars of money that went to support sort of a Reiner pet cause. And I think it'll fall apart. It has aleady fallen apart, and everyone's now jumping on him. Can corruption survive anymore? Duke Cunningham, Jack Abramoff, can anyone survive these information flows that isn't on the up and up?

GR: I think it's going to get harder and harder. And in fact, Duke Cunningham, of course, was living beyond his means for years. And the mainstream journalists never seemed to notice or care that this guy, who's a member of Congress, somehow had yachts and stuff like that. I think you're going to see ordinary citizens noticing stuff like that and pointing it out, and wondering where the money comes from. And I think that that's going to make it much, much tougher to be a crook.

The problem is, what Reynolds' is describing never happened. According to Union-Tribune ombudsman Gina Lubrano in a Dec. 5, 2005 column:

A reader dropped me an e-mail last week to praise The San Diego Union-Tribune for a recent Watchdog Report on people who owe the city of San Diego money. However, she found much to criticize in the newspaper's coverage of the pension scandal. She also noted that the newspaper had, in her eyes, somewhat redeemed itself with its reporting on the Randy "Duke" Cunningham scandal, but said her understanding was that the Union-Tribune was "forced" to report on his misdeeds after his neighbors did some snooping.

That was news to me. Although newspapers welcome and encourage tips from the public, Cunningham's neighbors did not prompt the reporting that launched a federal investigation into a bribery scandal. The stories about Cunningham, whom this newspaper endorsed for election, were based on enterprise reporting by Marcus Stern, a Copley News Service reporter for the Union-Tribune. He is based in Washington, D.C. Stern was doing what good reporters do. He was checking public records to understand why Cunningham had traveled to Saudi Arabia twice last year. That's when he stumbled upon the property sale records and started asking pointed questions.

I'm probably one of the toughest bloggers out there on the mainstream media, even though I have a foot in both the MSM world (I work for the Union-Tribune) and the blogosphere, but this was a case of the Union-Tribune doing solid investigative reporting. Longtime readers of Hoystory will know that I'm no sycophant to the Union-Tribune or the major media. For example, I've harshly criticized the Union-Tribune's coverage of the cartoon-insipired Muslim rioting (see here, here and here). But the credit for exposing Cunningham goes to the Union-Tribune and the Union-Tribune alone -- you can find the paper's extensive coverage here.

Bloggers and Reynolds' "Army of Davids" had exactly zilch to do with uncovering Cunningham's corruption.

And despite what Reynolds' claims, Cunningham wasn't a fool who was flaunting his excessive income. Cunningham bought a yacht in Washington, D.C. to live on while he was a member of Congress. That wasn't illegal, it was the fact that he sold the yacht for much more than it was worth and pocketed the difference -- that's not something blatantly illegal -- unless you're somehow a boat expert and carefully studying every sale in the area. Cunningham received a lot of antiques as bribes -- reporters are going to see that when? Do you honestly believe Duke was inviting reporters into his home? Duke was being given loans -- and then simply not paying them back. Reporters would of course figure this out immediately when they received Duke's monthly bank statements.

Glenn's belief that one day the general public and bloggers will be able to perform as effective watchdogs of public officials and quickly expose wrongdoing is probably correct, but the Cunningham case is not evidence of that.