For well over a year, many have feverishly raced to the defense of U.S. Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, accused of 22 criminal charges — including aiding the enemy — for leaking hundreds of thousands of pages of classified documents (and video) to Wikileaks. Late last month, for the first time, we finally heard his side of the story during an evidentiary hearing to determine whether he should be court-martialed. Many of his supporters, often at the courthouse daily clad in t-shirts emblazoned with his picture, must have been disappointed that Manning’s own lawyer hardly portrayed him as the grand patriot those defenders have depicted.

One of the beauties of the transfer of power from major media operations to individuals, bloggers and tweeters is that they — we — can all serve as a sort of fact-checking peanut gallery. So it’s hard to imagine that, in this day and age, the mainstream media could repeatedly misstate the holding of one of the most significant Supreme Court decisions without being roundly excoriated. Not a matter of opinion or a partisan viewpoint, but, simply parroting a mistake or lie about the holding in that crucial ruling.

When we launched Mediaite in July of 2009, there were a lot of naysayers out there expressing confidence that we would quickly and embarrassingly fail. After all, they proclaimed nearly in unison, who needs “another media site?” If Mediaite had been just another “media site,” like some other struggling New York based publications and web properties, they might have been right. But they never got what Colby Hall understood from the beginning, the chance to cover the intersection of media and politics in a way that has never been done before.

For well over a year, many have feverishly raced to the defense of U.S. Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, accused of 22 criminal charges including aiding the enemy for leaking hundreds of thousands of pages of classified documents (and video) to Wikileaks. Late in December, for the first time, we finally heard his side of the story during an evidentiary hearing to determine whether he should be court-martialed. His supporters, often at the courthouse daily clad in t-shirts emblazoned with his picture, must have been disappointed that Manning’s own lawyer hardly portrayed him as the grand patriot those defenders have depicted.

The entire first block of Anderson Cooper‘s program last night was devoted to keeping Rick Perry “honest” on his comments, or more accurately non-comments, about President Obama’s birth certificate. The previous night, his 10pm competitor Greta Van Susteren interviewed Donald Trump on his current view of Obama’s birth certificate. Trump (somewhat disingenuously) suggested that they “shouldn’t be talking about it” and even mocked her for posing it as the first question (he then proceeded into la la land with comments like “I am not a fan” and “not a believer” in the validity of it). In fact, in the two weeks before Rick Perry’s interview in Parade Magazine came out, the fake controversy surrounding Obama’s birth certificate earned barely a mention on cable news. According to the television transcript database TV Eyes, the terms “birther” and “birth certificate” was only mentioned 8 times across all of cable news. But since Friday, the terms “birther” and birth certificate were referenced 180 times; Fox News mentioned both 29 times, CNN 48, and MSNBC led with 103 mentions.

Remember Court TV and the national obsession with high profile trials? For about a decade from O.J. Simpson to Scott Peterson and Natalee Holloway the country seemed to have an insatiable appetite for soap opera like details that slowly and painstakingly emerged day in and day out in courtrooms and from investigations around the country. Courthouses regularly became tent cities with media encampments at high profile trials. Some judges and lawyers (and witnesses ie. Kato Kaelin) became more recognizable than most movie stars. Sometimes, the cases addressed important issues like in the trial of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy Mcveigh or assisted suicide doctor Jack Kevorkian or most obviously, Bush v. Gore. Others were far more frivolous like Anna Nicole Smith‘s lawsuit or a random celebrity drunk driving or drug case. Multiple daily cable news shows hosted by the likes of Geraldo Rivera, Greta Van Susteren, Nancy Grace (and me) covered the minutiae with analysis and debate from lawyers and participants.

Isn’t it ghastly? Will we be accused us of capitalizing on the nation’s grief? Is it still too soon?

Those were just some of the questions we faced when deciding whether to replay NBC’s 9/11 coverage when I was General Manager of MSNBC back in 2006. As I watched MSNBC air that coverage for a sixth year today, many of those same questions remain.

I am rarely accurate with prognostications or predictions but I am feeling pretty confident about two things: 1) there will be another high-profile trial in the not too distant future, like Casey Anthony‘s, that will capture the attention of the nation and the media; and 2) it will be followed by the hand-wringing and utter despair about the future of media that trail every high profile case. In fact, there is no surer way to be the belle of your media critic’s ball than to blast the Casey Anthony media coverage. From hackneyed assertions that “it’s not journalism,” to characterizations of it as “merchandising in tragedy”, to the populist position that it’s “just entertainment,” the Anthony coverage, like so many trials before it, serves as the ultimate media scapegoat.

At first blush, it seems like the ultimate case of hypocrisy exposed. America’s favorite undercover T.V. sleuth Chris Hansen caught on tape much the same way he has humiliated dozens of perverts, scam artists and hucksters.

Editor’s note – Greta Van Susteren recently published a post that was critical of a Mediaite ratings post that pointed out that her recent (and historic) live broadcast from North Korea did not garner great ratings in demo. She called the post “so un-Dan Abrams” and appeared to be frustrated by Mediaite’s lack of coverage of her historic trip (which we had actually covered earlier.) Following is a response from Mediaite founder Dan Abrams to Van Susteren’s critique.

(Note – this post was originally published on March 21, but has been re-posted given the news of a class-action lawsuit brought against Aol, Huffington Post and Arianna Huffington) What have I missed in the recent hullabaloo over the Huffington Post bloggers who write for free? As I understand it, last week, the Newspaper Guild and its 26,000-member union called for all unpaid Huffington Post contributors to withhold their work in support of a “strike” launched earlier this year by another organization. OK, fair enough: a newspaper guild rightly wants writers to get paid. In these tough times for the industry, it’s important to have those vigorous advocates, and anyone who has qualms about writing for free, either morally or practically, should refrain from so doing. Writing is not just an art – for many, it is also their only source of income.

As CBS correspondent Lara Logan continues to bravely recover, still enduring massive amounts of physical and psychological trauma after being sexually assaulted and beaten in Egypt, a “journalist” named Témoris Grecko is now suggesting that CBS may have altered or outright fabricated details of her attack in Tahrir Square. That’s right, he is speculating that CBS invented the assault because “this account does not fit with what I, and others, witnessed.”

I am thrilled to announce that all of the Abrams Media sites, each and every one, had a record month in January. Sure the success vary from granddaddy (18 months old) Mediaite and its syndicated content receiving over 12.5 million page views (5.1 million unique visitors) to Geekosystem‘s (which turned a year old this month) 2.7 million pageviews (1.24 million uniques) to Styleite‘s 827,000 unique visitors (with the highest number of page views per unique) to baby Sportsgrid (8 months old) breaking 550,000 unique visitors. Sister site Gossip Cop also saw record breaking page views second only to Mediaite.

I’ll confess I was one of the dubious ones. But after watching hours of OWN over its inaugural weekend along with a casual Oprah fan, I am now convinced that I was wrong and they do get just that. Somehow it delivers on an opaque and tough to define mission of “self-discovery, connecting you to your best self and to the world.”

I’ll be honest—each month, as we see record numbers at our young sites, I worry. I fear that the next month can’t possibly rival the previous one, that it will be nearly impossible to beat those numbers in the near future. After all, our staffs are about as lean as they get (some sites have just 2 employees), we don’t have a corporate entity or venture capital firm behind us, and we have already vastly exceeded any and all expectations. Yet here we are again.

I am thrilled to announce that Mark Joyella, a five-time Emmy winning reporter joins Mediaite today as the new TV Editor. Mark has worked as a reporter and anchor at television stations across the country including Miami and New York and has been honored by the Associated Press, and the Radio-Television News Directors’ Association.

Its hard for me to believe but once again, all four of our wholly owned sites Mediaite, Geekosystem, Styleite and Sportsgrid, hit all time traffic highs. Each time we celebrate new records, I keep fearing the best may be behind us, but alas, the teams outdo themselves again.

According to web traffic assessment site Quantast.com the Abrams Media Network is ranked at number 204, right behind long time stalwart’s like The Wall Street Journal’s, WSJ.com (200) and just ahead of Usmagazine.com (215) and Newsweek.com (216). I am so proud of all the teams that have made this happen.

Now that the initial furor has died down, much of the media is quickly coming to a consensus that the debate over building a Muslim community and prayer center two blocks from Ground Zero was overblown. It is/was part of a “summer of fear,” or a “ginned up furor.” But this story wasn’t really the equivalent of summer sharks

Frank Rich is frustrated. He is clearly annoyed that the Wikileaks release of almost 92,000 pages of documents related to the war in Afghanistan has not become more of a rallying cry to end that military effort. Or more specifically, he is seeking to reassure those hoping it will ultimately have that impact, to be patient.

This week I felt what it’s like to be on the other side. I learned of a personal horror not from an emotional, personal phone call or visit but via the stoic and anonymous media. I learned about a heartbreaking event occurring to a loved one through the eyes of someone who did not know or care about her. I felt the helpless frustration of wanting the media to say more and less.

It is hard to believe it’s been a full year since our newbie website with the awkward-sounding name was welcomed to the blogosphere with accolades such as “sounds…like something you’d give to a toddler suffering diarrhea,” or “no one really cares about the business and personalities behind the media,” or my personal favorite, “Mediaite feels a bit doomed.” Ah, yes — that honeymoon period was so sweet. We all love to curl up with the scrapbook and reminisce about the early days.

Always trying to appear objective, the mainstream media has its own brand of bias: an institutional one towards controversy. The moment it became clear that Elena Kagan would be nominated by President Barack Obama, editors simultaneously posed the same rhetorical question: What do we really know about her? What is the dirt? Well the vacuum of controversy is now leading to overt frustration expressed on both sides of the media political aisle.

As the founder of Mediaite, I am thrilled to announce that our site’s ongoing success — both in terms of traffic and advertising — has led us to create three new websites, which will launch early next year. The Mediaite Network (including syndicated content) is now on track to attract over one million unique visitors this month after less than six months in existence, and we expect to turn a profit next year. We have also landed a place in Technorati’s top 40, alongside blogs ten times older than us. Few sites have achieved this level of growth and success so early

It’s hard to believe that it has been less than four months since we launched Mediaite.com. We honestly never dreamed we would be seeing this kind of traffic so early in the process. It is a fascinating time for the media. Opinions appear to be more commercially viable than ever, but is that costing us [...]

It’s hard to believe that it has been three months since we launched Mediaite.com. In that period I have learned the language of the web: PHP, CPM, uniques, ummm site crashing? And here I thought the cable news wars were as brutal as media can be. It’s been a wild ride with achievements that have [...]