Posted on 09/15/2004 2:28:40 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
A revolution is sweeping the American media that will eventually spread to this part of the world.
What is happening is that for the first time in decades, if not ever, the power of the mainstream media (MSM) in the United States is being seriously challenged by a mostly ragtag army of outsiders armed with little more than the internet. The age of the blogger is upon us.
A blogger is someone who keeps a web-log, updated on an almost daily basis. They offer blow-by-blow commentary on current events. They can do so at almost no cost and their sites can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection anywhere in the world. Basically the internet has eliminated the cost of entry into the world of media and commentary at a stroke.
Last week we had a clear demonstration of blogger power.
CBS broke a story based on a document purporting to blow further holes in George Bush's National Guards record. This was to be the big counteroffensive against Bush following the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Kerry.
The trouble is, it fizzled out in no time. Why? Certainly it was not because of the MSM, which showed no desire to subject the story to critical scrutiny, seeing as it was helping their man, John Kerry.
Instead it was left up to the bloggers to do that. As soon as the story broke they pounced on it and quickly showed that the document upon which CBS based its story was in all likelihood a forgery.
CBS and its unbelievably pompous anchorman, Dan Rather, have tried their best to defend the story but it is now all but dead and with it possibly Kerry's chance of election.
This sort of thing has never happened before because no one was around to call the MSM to account before.
The MSM in the US is liberal with few exceptions and will gladly run stories that embarrass the Republicans and suppress stories that will embarrass the Democrats. But now with the bloggers on the scene, the bias of the MSM is being revealed daily and the MSM can't stand it.
Let's broaden out the perspective here. As others have pointed out, what is happening to the MSM is roughly analogous to what happened to the Catholic Church when the printing press was invented. Up to that point the Catholic church controlled most of the available bibles and therefore the theological interpretations of the Bible.
This gave it great power in a Europe that was still very religious-minded.
Then the printing press arrived and put the Bible in the hands of vast numbers of people who could read it for themselves and interpret it in their own way. Before it knew it, the Catholic Church was faced with the Reformation, and not long after that the continuing proliferation of Protestant churches began in earnest. The Catholic Church had lost its monopoly because it lost control of the Bible.
Similarly the MSM is now losing its monopoly over the news. Before the arrival of the bloggers the vast majority of people had to rely on CBS, NBC, ABC, and the mostly liberal print media, dominated by papers such as the New York Times, for their daily news. Almost as importantly, they also relied on these outlets for their interpretation of the news.
Now the proliferating number of bloggers is directly challenging not only the MSM's interpretation of the news, but also what it decides should be news and what shouldn't be news. Some bloggers actually break news, e.g. the Drudge Report, which broke the Monica Lewinski story.
This is devastating for both the MSM and the Democrats, who have long been given a more or less free pass by the MSM. Never again will it dominate the news as it once did. Those days are gone and in the years to come its power will diminish and, with it, its influence.
I came across an ad at the weekend that showed a man skewered by a woman's high heel. A striking image to be sure. Men are an easy-going lot about these things. We treat them as a joke. However, it's easy to imagine the reaction of feminist groups if an ad showed a woman being crushed under a man's heel.
Not much humour in those quarters.
Ragtag army of pajama people. Cool.
"CBS and its unbelievably pompous anchorman, Dan Rather"
ROTFL! Seems they have Dan pegged in Belfast.
"The MSM in the US is liberal with few exceptions and will gladly run stories that embarrass the Republicans and suppress stories that will embarrass the Democrats."
It must be REALLY obvious if they're getting it in Europe.
"This is devastating for both the MSM and the Democrats"
Let's hope so.
Oh, you are good.
LOL!!
I'm certainly enjoying this.
See post 37... evening the score a bit!
Me too!
Mrs. B just saw it and sends regards!
So...
Bloggers = The Reformation
Buckhead = Martin Luther
Post #47 = The Thesis (which was also posted)
I like it.
In light of this new day of news distribution via blogs, I think you might want to amend your tag line to "riding into the DAWN (not sunset).
Cool!
The liberal MSM, in order to restore even a semblance of credibility going forward, will have to police itself carefully ... they will be much more circumspect.
In the old days, people watched the 3 networks to get the news or read newspapers. Today, that has all changed with the internet. People can find out the truth immediately instead of having to wait days or even weeks. In the old days, most people got letters from people who questioned what the MSM was saying. Today, emails have taken care of that by being able to write and receive letters a few seconds or minutes of it being written. I guess what I am trying to say is that this country has changed forever with the use of the internet.
Let's Roll.
Without their cover, the RATS will be as dead as the dinosaur within 5 years.
I sure hope you're right, but if some of the calls I hear on C-span are any indication, there are still plenty of people out there who don't know how dangerous liberalism is. I say that without sarcasm or tongue in cheek...there's a Bible verse that says, "My people perish for lack of vision" (some versions read, "knowledge."). While the Lord was not talking about issues like these, the principle remains the same. People don't know...they believe what they read in the papers or hear from friends and family, and they just don't know. Until the nation begins to wake up and smell the burned coffee, liberalism may very well be a force to be reckoned with in the years to come...but let's hope it's a dramatically weaker force that will become even weaker, still, as people learn the truth.
I've been reading some of the things the press wrote about Reagan while he was still in office. If it wasn't so utterly tragic, it would be hilarious.
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