Posted on 12/29/2004 11:55:57 AM PST by 82Marine89
David beat Goliath repeatedly in 2004, as a ragtag crowd of commentators on political Weblogs, most of them unpaid, hastened the retirement of a media icon and derailed a $300 million presidential campaign.
Political bloggers shoved Dan Rather toward the door and brought John Kerry's political biography back to Earth. Not bad for a bunch of amateurs.
Yet 2004 was no fluke. Blogs are neither a fad, nor a creation of the vast, right-wing conspiracy. They're a cyberspace version of the 18th-century pamphleteers who defied the British crown and championed American independence - an online truth squad spanning the political spectrum that revels in revealing inaccurate reporting or misleading arguments. And bloggers will continue to dislodge entrenched elites so long as mainstream journalism rebukes rather than embraces them.
Blogs react to events as they occur. They can incorporate in postings background materials that are too detailed for a newspaper story or a TV broadcast. And the rough code of ethics that guides the most prominent political bloggers - their willingness to answer criticism and confess mistakes in real time so that they can uphold their reputation - could undermine the credibility of "old media" institutions that aren't comfortable saying, "We goofed."
Take the faked documents story that sank CBS and Dan Rather. "60 Minutes Wednesday" purportedly found memos showing that President Bush used family ties to duck his duty as a pilot with the Texas Air National Guard.
Some prominent political blogs based in Southern California:
Hit and Run: www.reason .com/hitandrun
Hugh Hewitt: www.hughhewitt.com
Mickey Kaus: kausfiles.com
Little Green Footballs: www.littlegreenfootballs.com
Roger L. Simon: www.rogerlsimon.com
The Remedy: www.clare mont.org/weblog
The Volokh Conspiracy: volokh.com
Also, a loose alliance of about 75 California-oriented blogs called the Bear Flag League, www.bear flagleague.com, includes some Inland blogs.
If true, the documents could have weakened Bush's re-election bid. But the memos were bogus. Without genuine documents to substantiate the report, it became nothing more than a partisan hit piece ... and the news shifted from whether Bush was a shirker to how the CBS brass (led by Rather) was fooled by a forgery.
The fakery emerged within hours of the "60 Minutes" broadcast. Bloggers -notably the lawyers who run the Powerline blog and Web page designer Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs - found document experts among their readers who swore the memos were phony; Johnson even created a replica of one on his site, using word processing technology that didn't exist on Bush's airbase in 1972.
Enterprising newspaper and TV reporters followed up with experts who said the memos smelled fishy. Journalists also found people who served with Bush and his commanders. The story continued to unravel - and the unofficial tag team of bloggers and paid journalists led Rather to announce his retirement.
Similarly, blogs unearthed exaggerations in John Kerry's political biography, backing up some of the devastating charges by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Kerry's claim that he spent Christmas of 1968 in Cambodia didn't pass muster. And when bloggers caught Kerry spinning conflicting tales about his post-war medal-tossing, the candidate's self-promotion looked tawdry, not heroic.
It's this "truth squad" aspect to blogging - a burning desire to separate facts from spin - that should give big media the willies. Bloggers don't pretend to be "fair and balanced." Many are partisan cheerleaders, nothing more.
But bloggers have reputations. As the "Instapundit," University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, said of Rathergate: "For journalists of (Rather's) generation, admitting an error means admitting that you've violated people's trust. For bloggers, admitting an error means you've missed something, and now you're going to set it straight."
Bloggers are prone to hubris, to call mainstream media outlets dinosaurs that can't (or won't) adapt to the Internet's immediacy. The reality is, big media won't disappear any time soon, because networks and newspapers and wire services can hire reporters to gather original information, whether at the city council meeting, the fire down the street or the tsunami a world away.
Bloggers can't rival the fact-finding capabilities of professional journalists. And the most popular blogs have thousands, not millions, of readers or viewers. But blogs can keep the mainstream media honest, by exposing stories driven by partisan agendas rather than the pursuit of truth.
For the major news outlets to thrive in this new era, they should establish formal ties with bloggers, perhaps as regular commentators, or even as ombudsmen that keep the "legacy media" vital in the Information Age.
As I have said, Jim Robinson is the Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine of our times......
YEAH BABY YEAH !
I thought the title referred to the Dallas Cowboys.
I like that. Big Media = BM.
Bloggers are prone to hubris, to call mainstream media outlets dinosaurs that can't (or won't) adapt to the Internet's immediacy. The reality is, big media won't disappear any time soon, because networks and newspapers and wire services can hire reporters to gather original information, whether at the city council meeting, the fire down the street or the tsunami a world away.
Bloggers can't rival the fact-finding capabilities of professional journalists. And the most popular blogs have thousands, not millions, of readers or viewers. But blogs can keep the mainstream media honest, by exposing stories driven by partisan agendas rather than the pursuit of truth.
Admitting an ERROR for Rather's ilk is not admitting a violation of trust - it is confessing fallability. The problem with the author's contention is fairly simple - the MSM has (consciously or unconsciously) applied a uniformly liberal bias to their reporting (first) and gathering (as of the last few years) of "raw data".
Once MSM dinosaurs like Rather discovered the power that lies in "metering" (i.e.: controlling the flow) information, they quit acting in the public's interest and started promulgating their own. Dan's infamous memos were only the latest example - where ideology and an overfed ego made him (apparently) believe that squirrely papers from a suspect source that had been denounced by legitimate experts could ONLY be genuine.
Admitting an error is the least of his worries - admitting he has steadfastly refused to do his job to a reasonable standard of effort in presenting "just the facts" is much more troubling to the DANdy DINO. (Note that I only mention effort, and not RESULTS!)
Blogs probably will not replace the MSM - but they will augment the new electronically networked media that picks up facts from eyewitnesses the world over. Drudge is a forerunner of this new media, although he still relies too much on others' reporting through the big media.
Proof you made a difference.
"Bloggers can't rival the fact-finding capabilities of professional journalists."
Then how come we call them on false data all the time?
The fact is that bloggers, FReepers, are not the ones watching the news, we are at many time the people making the news.
Even this blog-tooting jake was AFRAID to name us.
You know the truth is that FR has ZERO "readers". FR has ZERO "audience".
Here at FR *everyone* is a participant. No passivity. We are are in conversation at the same table.
FYI
I don't see "us" mentioned in here, do you?
The very "us" who first discovered these forgeries and EMAILED them to Powerline and LittleGreenFootballs in the middle of the night so they'd have the bright and early the next morning, so they could post them on their weblogs and NOT give us any credit.
Damnit, I'm tired of this.
GRRRRRRR....LOL!
Want to know what I think about them, especially after this incident?
Are Little Green Footbals and Powerline neo-stalinists?
They sure do have a problem mentioning FR by name don't they
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