The progressive blog community Daily Kos was responsible for spreading the rumor - possibly inventing it even - that Sarah Palin’s son Trig may not be her, but her daughter’s son.

The rumor was as vicious as it was false, but that did not prevent Markos Moulitsas from publishing it and spreading it around. It was based on nothing but rumors, and a little bit of research would quickly have shown him and his editors that the story was based on flawed assumptions.

Research, in short, would have caused DK to either retract the story immediately after it was published or not to publish it at all.

That is not, however, what Moulitsas did. He happily published the story, knowing it would hurt Palin even if it was not true. What mattered to Moulitsas was not the truth, it was about getting a story out there that hurt his ‘enemy.’

And so many bloggers and even news channels picked the story up. Everybody ran with it, taking mere gossip serious.

Events described above perfectly show that Moulitsas suffers from a tremendous ethics problem. Better, he does not seem to have any.

So the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz contacted him, asking him why the story was published in the first place. Instead of defending himself and displaying some sense of right and wrong, Moulitsas made clear what he thinks about such vague and old fashioned concepts.

“Our people are doing the vetting. Even if some of it is hitting dead ends, other ones are striking direct hits,” Moulitsas said. His role, he added, “is to sit back and let the citizen journalists do their job, and I amplify the stuff that shakes out.”

Every single person who places even a minimum of trust in Moulitsas should read the above a couple of times in order to perfectly understand what he is saying. It is truly shocking to read. Almost incomprehensible.

The irony of him choice of words (the citizen journalists) is that these people do many things, but being a ‘journalist’ is not one of them; not even a ‘citizen’ journalist. It is spreading rumors, nothing more, nothing less.

Throwing dirt against the wall, hoping something, anything sticks is what Daily Kos specializes in. This is not merely criticism from someone who disagrees with virtually every single opinion expressed on that website, it is quite an accurate way to paraphrase the site’s owner’s words.

What should worry bloggers - and reporters who often read blogs - most about Moulitsas being ethically disabled is that his behavior reflects bad on the blogosphere as a whole. The man is the founder of one of the most important blogs around. He is a key player, and will continue to be one in the foreseeable future. If outsiders who know little to nothing about blogging want to find out more about it, they go to Daily Kos. What happens at that place affects every other single blog and news and opinion website.

Daily Kos is, sadly, not alone. It is, perhaps, the largest blog with an ethics problem, but it is far from the only one (this goes for both sides in the political debate). DK is not the disease, it is a symptom of something inherently wrong with the blogosphere. The main problem is not even partisanship; this is a problem, of course, but Moulitsas’ behavior is more than (overly) partisan. It is disgraceful, dishonest, and extreme. A gossip magazine would not even publish the kind of stories published at his website.

If the blogosphere does not deal with this problem soon, I fear it will blow itself up; instead of a great place for news and opinions, it will become a center for activists. Even moderately independent-minded individuals will not visit it any longer; instead, they will simply read and watch the mainstream media. The result will be that the blogosphere will not be taken serious by anyone, except by those who want to raise money for a political campaign.

And that would be a pity, for the blogosphere has a lot of potential.