Posted on 09/01/2004 5:44:02 AM PDT by OESY
...The election coverage from Big Media has been unusually partisan this time around. As Newsweek's Evan Thomas famously remarked: "Let's talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win... that's going to be worth maybe 15 points."
...Mr. Kerry, as even many Dems are admitting, is a weak candidate. But the big media advantage doesn't seem to have turned out to be as big as some thought.
...In a Boston Herald ...Mr. Kerry wrote: "On more than one occasion, I, like Martin Sheen in 'Apocalypse Now,' took my patrol boat into Cambodia...."
But the story isn't true. And the Kerry campaign eventually admitted that, but only after prodding from the media. Not from the newspapers and TV networks -- which studiously ignored the story for nearly two weeks -- but from blogs and talk radio. Bloggers researched the story on Google, on Factiva and Lexis, and in libraries. Talk-radio hosts, including some like Neal Boortz and Hugh Hewitt who are bloggers themselves, retailed the findings to the wider world. Eventually the Kerry campaign was forced to respond, which then forced the New York Times and the LA Times, grudgingly, to admit that the story existed and to start their own coverage.
...[T]he Kerry media strategy was geared to the media environment of 1972, where the refusal to carry the story of a few big outlets chummy with the campaign would have been enough to keep things quiet. That didn't work, as the new media were enough to neutralize the media advantage that Kerry's strategy was built around....
[S]o long as the mainstream media are lazy, and biased-- and strongly in favor of a Democrat-- the fact-checking and media-bypassing power of the blogosphere is likely to disproportionately favor Republicans. That's ...a reflection on big media.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Well, maybe the old media will understand that it is here to report the news, not to hide them!
But I don't hold my breath!
Viva la internet!
They no longer hold that to be their creed. They are now openly in the public relations (i.e. spin) business and just happen to convey some news as a byproduct.
I truly believe that if current technology, the internet bloggers and today's cable news had existed in 1992 we may have been spared the vile Clinton presidency. The lies and misrepresentations of both Clinton's, Juanita Broderick's story, and the actual facts behind Whitewater would have been shoved down the throats of the Old Media much as the Swifties' testimony has now.
Hello, I'm Valin...and I'm a Blogaholic.
LOL! Me, too.
I knew the world had changed when I started checking Instapundit first every morning rather than the WashPost. Now I check Instapundit, Realclearpolitics, National Review and Best of the Web Today far more often than the WaPo, NY Times, or LA Times---which all seem so antiquated compared to the blogs.
WaPo, NY Times, or LA Times serve a VERY useful function particularly for those who own birds. And let's not forget those in the crossword community.
Hat tip for my new tagline.
Live by the media, die by the media? I couldn't resist.
I think there is a good chance you are right.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.