Posted on 02/17/2005 7:32:57 PM PST by keat
With the recent toppling of CBS's Dan Rather and now CNN's top news executive, Eason Jordan, I think we can declare without fear of contradiction that rigor mortis is settling over the carcass of the Fourth Estate.
At least as we once knew it.
I make this pronouncement without pleasure, and in fact, suggest that we're really witnessing a double funeral. One is for traditional journalism as the omnipotent gatekeeper of information. As bloggers -- authors of Web logs -- have gleefully pointed out the past several days, everyone with access to the Internet is now a journalist.
Given the "instanaeity" of the bloggers' electronic encampment, known as the "blogosphere" -- enabling real-time posting of news and commentary -- newspapers and even broadcast media have become the news cycle's Sunday drivers.
(Excerpt) Read more at orlandosentinel.com ...
"traditional journalism as the omnipotent gatekeeper of information."
The beast is named.
Who'd'a thunk it?
The antithesis of free speech.
There are no gate keepers now!
And generally doing a better job of fact-checking and correction than any newspaper ever even attempted.
muhahhaha
She states in the article that "off the record' is dead, but it always has been for conservatives.
She also posits the notion that bloggers can write anything without consequenses, which is nonsense. The only way a blogger will be taken seriously is to check the facts he is posting. Post wildly and you will lose your reputation, and therfore your audience.
Free speech is not under attack - stupid statements are.
Same goes for broadcasting wildly.
"And generally doing a better job of fact-checking and correction than any newspaper ever even attempted"
Exactly!
I can say that Andy Rooney and Dan Rather are having a homosexual affair all I want. Everyone who disagrees with me will do everything in their power to prove me wrong and everyone who agrees will try to prove me right. In the end the FACTS will come out and that is whats important.
Peggy Noonan had an excellent piece at Opinion Journal today, on the place of Blogs in the world, and it made me think about not only "the rise of the blogs", but about the whole internet in general.
Remember when the "information superhighway" term was first coined? What did it mean? It was touted that information would spread at the speed of light across the globe, connecting disparate peoples in commonality of purpose or interest in ways we couldn't even imagine at the time.
Of course, that notion was sidetracked as the internet bubble filled with unlimited capital and the notion of the new economy where profits weren't as important as stock prices, and it wasn't as important to actually have a quantifiable and desirable product as it was to have a catchy name for your website.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the fortune. A lot of people just liked the idea of being able to find stuff out, and put their thoughts down somewhere that others could see it.
human curiosity:
Someone sees a CBS report on the Presidents' Guard service, goes to a CBS webpage that has "documents" offering proof, and posts it to a 'gathering and investigation node'. In this case, Free Republic, where someone else says "that looks fake". Someone immediately sends the link to others, who send it to others, including someone who recreates it exactly in Microsoft Word using default settings, seen by others who query on circa 1970's typewriters, finding the only best and foremost authority on all that jazz, who says "not only not bloody likely, but not bloody possible." Others query the nomenclature of circa military jargon and equipment, etc. etc. etc...and suddenly, despite all protestations to the contrary, Dan Rather is a piece of roadkill tire-patch as the parade passes him by.
By that same token, and the vagaries of human thought, the following is not an impossible scenario:
A teenager in the hills of Kyrzigstan, using a 15 year old computer powered by a diesel generator, is posting on his blog what a pain it is, because it's been cold and dry lately, and the chinking in his wood 'n mud hut is cracked, and he has to slog 9 km down to the creek to get this special crap dirt his Dad says is the only kind they can use.
A bricklayer from Akron is looking for a better deal on supplies, since he's got a new kid and new computer, and a penny saved and all that.
Not knowing any better way to start, he plugs "mud" into google, and after 5 pages of disgust and frustration, comes across this kids blog. He wonders what this "special dirt" is, so he sends an e-mail with the kids address to his uncle, who's a PhD and head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, and tries a different search.
Uncle, of course, is intrigued, and having nothing better to do at the time, writes the kid, asking for a sample of the dirt, sending him $20 as a goodwill gesture. Of course the kid sends him the dirt, since $20 is a years wages in that part of Kyrzigstan, and his parents say "We are honest people, send the dirt.".
After spectral analysis and a couple months of intense "playtime", the Prof sends the kid a 50 pound bag of a soybean derivative that'll hold that dirt perfectly in the chinks for the entire county in that part of Kyrzigstan for everybody's lives, and 14 years later they're using the same polymers to build shelters at the U.S. moonbase.
That's the information superhighway.
"All the News that's Fit to Print"...says who? Who is fit to decide what's fit to print? Who's fit to read what news? Why is anyone deciding what is news? Where do these people get that level of authority and control over my ability to know? How did this happen, and when is this going to change?
Now is When:
The internet isn't so much a superhighway as it is a global facsimile of the human brain, with each person on it playing the role of a neuron. Neurons receive impulses of information and fire off to other neurons they think have some correlation or link to what they received. Then those neurons act on the input and send it on again. and so on...
Sooner or later all those links hook into something that inititiates a physical action.
Welcome to the Global Neural Net...can I see your dirt?
But then, the Orlando Sentinel is part of Legacy Media.
These people think its dangerous for 'the people' to have the truth
Embarrassingly ridiculous. Pointing out lies and not letting people get away with it is a chilling effect on freedom of speech?
And "traditional journalism's reign of lying, twisting, and distorting that information in order to prop up their Democrat Party and foist Euro-style secular socialism on America is over. Kaput. And I'm feeling jiggly all over.
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