This forum allows me to comment on anything...from foreign policy and democrat political tactics to the Westminster Dog Show and car chases on Fox. How empowering is this ability to have my words read by thousands!
And the power that I have is something that the MSM do not want me to have; they wanted that power of being heard reserved for themselves.
Congressman, your comment about separating the fans from the players was spot on. Even here on FR we do this. There are members whom I trust for their opinions, and then the rabble who run in one direction or another depending on the topic. I think you made a very astute observation.
Thank you , Billybob, for standing up for us. Our voices are just as important as those of the MSM, and in fact more so. God bless Jim Robinson for this site, and for the inspiration to others.
The greatest part of FR is, when you spend some time and learn the "players", you discover who really knows what they are talking about. The need to discover that, of course, is the downfall, too - so many seek to opine on items that they don't have much basis, and that can lead to difficulty for newbies, including, I suppose, the Old Media who are trying to figure FR out. We have a great wealth of experience and knowledge in almost any field, collectively, and in almost all stories, it becomes obvious who has the real insight - but that process is not very straightforward, so someone watching briefly how it is done is easily misled.
In addition, and in many stories even more important, is the collective memory we have represented here --- almost every topic has some super-involved folks from the past: Clinton scandals == Alamo Girl and her many assistants, for example, but that is not the only one. I daresay if you brought up nearly any story history from OJ, to Nick Berg, to Iraq War(s), to JFK.jr death, to cosmology, ..., etc., you would quickly find FReepers who were deeply involved in that story. But that's not the only thing: we have a collective college education as well as life experience education that no newsroom in the country is able to afford and call on as rapidly as we have it at our fingertips. And, now that it seems none of them care to even try to do research any more, on such simple topics that are dealt with in easy historical documents or common sense (the proportional fonts of the CBS FRAUDcast comes immediately to mind), they are at a real disadvantage.
In addition, none of the real movers here have any trouble doing honest and real research on the 'net (and many have their own personal resources complimenting that)... and most of the Old Mediots seem to have no ability there.