The podcast panelists sneered at Kearney as just another pesky “blogger,” clearly irritated that someone outside the ivory tower of network media dared to do actual reporting. Because heaven forbid someone without a corporate salary and a makeup team contribute to public discourse.

Let’s be clear: Kearney does have a court case pending. He’s controversial and is facing charges like witness intimidation – which he denies, arguing it’s all protected under the First Amendment. You know, that pesky little document that allows journalists (and yes, bloggers) to speak freely. But none of that has stopped him from digging into the Karen Read trial and also attending in person. And – according to some – doing a better job covering it than the entire mainstream press combined.

Kearney has an entire website, not just a page of blogging. It’s called Turtleboy Daily News. On his YouTube channel “TB Live” he’s got more than 1,700 videos and has more than 132K subscribers. His website has videos, a store and much more. He’s not solely focused on Karen Read either. He has other true crime stuff on his site.

Humorously, it was one of the panelists on the Canton Confidential podcast that actually admitted that Kearney did something that the police couldn’t or wouldn’t do – he found a key witness – a snowplow driver who was at the scene of the crime several times during the snowstorm that night.

Also covering the trial are many podcasters in addition to Kearney. Some are attorneys like Michigan attorney Martin E. Radner, known as “Brother Counsel” and Emily D. Baker, attorney, legal commentator, and content creator. There are also many true crime podcasters who are not attorneys or “journalists” like Serialously’s Annie Elise.

And some of their stuff is WAAAAAY better than I’m getting from Canton Confidential especially since the appearance of a new panelist dude (don’t know his name, sorry) who is skewed towards being anti-Karen Read and is handing out idiotic statements where his read on things is just totally insane.

And if you don’t know what I’m talking about because you’re not following the Karen Read case (are you living under a rock??!), then just know that this article is less about Karen Read and more about the mainstream media looking down on independent journalists, bloggers and podcasters because they’re not in the “system.”

One commentator on Canton Confidential even went full doomsday, suggesting that bloggers turn things into “Pitchfork time with an amplifier” and they made a snarky comment about “journalism versus blogging” as if what THEY do counts and nothing else.

Another said that citizen-journalists and bloggers don’t have “bosses” who tell them “let’s think this through what the impact is, how we report it, is it fair, are we doing our due diligence” – inferring that we all just do what we want with no research or accountability and no news editors or AI assistance.