Posted on 02/20/2005 12:53:35 PM PST by srm913
Bloggers go big-game hunting As Internet `journalists' bag another prize, Tim Harper considers the consequences for mainstream media
TIM HARPER
Often witty, sometimes racy, certainly irreverent, frequently sanctimonious, the blogosphere has been bulking up for years.
But the mainstream media have long taken a largely dismissive approach to this world of online political journals: Open. Peek. Chuckle. Close.
No more.
The growing army of American cyber-pundits hunched over their search engines has begun to wield strength that no one predicted.
The bloggers have brought down the powerful.
They have unmasked an impostor in the White House briefing room.
Perhaps most importantly, they have begun to shape a wide-open race for president in 2008.
And they are in the vanguard of a movement that should give pause to everyone who works in what the bloggers refer to disparagingly as the MSM — mainstream media.
It invites the question: is everybody a journalist today?
The blogosphere won a lot of attention during the U.S. presidential campaign when it broke the news that documents relating to President George W. Bush's National Guard service in the 1970s, aired by CBS News, may have been fake.
The traditional media jumped in after being alerted by bloggers and the story dealt a body blow to a venerable news organization, ultimately leading to next month's retirement of anchor Dan Rather and the departure of respected editor Mary Mapes.
In recent weeks, the blogosphere struck again, outing an impostor right in the White House briefing room, a man who called himself Jeff Gannon, but whose real name is James D. Guckert.
Writing for an Internet news service known as Talon News, a web offshoot of the pro-Republican GOPUSA, Guckert drew attention to himself by tossing a sympathetic question to Bush during a recent press conference, asking how the president would deal with Democrats who "seem to have divorced themselves from reality."
When bloggers further revealed he had links to sexually explicit websites, including one called militarystuds.com, the story "gained legs" and added to White House embarrassment.
However, it was the stunning takedown of CNN news executive Eason Jordan that brought the blogosphere to the forefront of debate.
Jordan was speaking at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland late last month when, according to witnesses to his off-the-record comments, he said he believed the U.S. military had purposely targeted journalists in Iraq and killed 12 of them.
None of the journalists present reported the remarks until Rony Abovitz, a 34-year-old businessman from Florida and neophyte blogger, posted a story on Jordan's comments.
Outside of a couple of comments on cable news round-tables, virtually no one in the mainstream media reported anything about the comments until Jordan resigned, a victim of a story that never made it beyond the Internet.
The battle lines were drawn.
Bloggers crowed, saying they had trumped the MSM, which was trying to protect one of its own.
The mainstream media portrayed bloggers as vigilantes.
A headline in The New York Times referred to them as New Media Trophy Hunters.
"Bloggers bagged a TV-news bigwig," reported Broadcasting and Cable, a trade publication.
Steve Lovelady, a former Philadelphia Inquirer and Wall Street Journal editor now with the Columbia Journalism Review, reacted to the Jordan resignation with a comment sure to live in the memories of bloggers for years to come.
"The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail," he wrote.
Tom McPhail, a Canadian-born professor of journalism at the University of Missouri, has already been a target of bloggers for calling them "pretend journalists."
"They see red meat and they swarm," he said in an interview. "Eason Jordan is just their latest roadkill."
Bloggers' impact cannot be ignored, said McPhail, who believes they gained legitimacy when officially accredited to cover the U.S. political conventions last summer.
But that doesn't make them credible, he said.
"There will be no more `off-the-record.' This will have a chilling effect on politicians.
"You are going to have bloggers out of the White House, Parliament Hill, Queen's Park — and it's going to change the way politicians operate."
Bloggers first broke into the national consciousness in a big way in 2002,when they ultimately forced Senate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi to step down.
Lott, in a 100th-birthday tribute to now-deceased South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond, waxed nostalgic about the good old days of segregation, a comment first ignored by the media in the room.
But the comment was captured by C-SPAN and the bloggers went to work, this time with the help of the mainstream media which, on further review, decided it was a big story and hammered Lott until he stepped down.
The tables were turned on a blogger recently when Maryland's Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich had to fire an aide who had been posting erroneous rumours about the marital infidelity of Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, his probable Democratic opponent in the 2006 state gubernatorial race.
After the Washington Post outed the aide, O'Malley and his wife arrived hand-in-hand to denounce the rumour mongering and now there are allegations that the Ehrlich operative had been lured into the open by a blogger — either a journalist or a Democrat — going by the moniker MD4BUSH.
On townhall.com, a daily roundup of conservative views, Media Research Center president Brent Bozell said the blogosphere appeared powerful because the mainstream media had avoided the Jordan story.
The resignation "made the blogs seem so powerful that liberals started attacking them for recklessly destroying Jordan's career, even using goofy terms like `cyber-McCarthyism' to denounce it.
"But what the bloggers did here was deliver information and accountability, the same things the major media purport to be providing — unless it's one of their own in the hot seat."
Still, syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker, a fan of the blogosphere, added a warning: "For all their attractive swashbuckling and bravura, bloggers also can become a cyber-mob that acts, as mobs do, without conscience or restraint."
Parker worries that — if bloggers continue to believe everything is fair game — "off the record" will no longer apply and the ability to speak freely will become a thing of the past.
Ooooh, how original! Despite his myriad flaws, McCarthy was a truth-teller. So are we.
No, just smarter and more observant than the MSM thinks they are..
Oooh! I like that! Adding to the keywords!
Translation: There will be no more leaks without attribution. People will have to stand behind their little backstabs. If that's a "chilling effect," then we need a "chilling effect."
The title of this stupid story should be, "We used to get away with lying, dammit!"
I don't consider myself a journalist, because I'd have to lower my fact-checking standards.
The Establishment is uncomfortable about the idea that common citizen bloggers may legally be considered part of "the Press", with all the rights and privileges thereof
Well respected by the communists and a bunch of liars.
Here's to the pajamahadeen!
The faux "reporting" of advocacy journalism turned off a lot of honest people. LGF and PowerLine are jewels of aggressive and skillful news dissemination. And more to come...
In other words, the writer hates transparency. Pity, that is just the way it is these days. The lights are being beamed into dark closets everywhere, and the critters that thrive in the dark don't like it.
"Gannon's" mistake is that he was too defensive. He should have just said my private life is none of your freaking business. I am not in public office. There is no nexus between it and what I did as a reporter. Just shove it.
He's still under the impression that someone cares about the Gannon story, and the Old Media was pushing the Trent Lott story for all it was worth, although Lott said nothing about segregation.
I notice he conveniently forgot to mention the biggest blogger bagging:
Why should there be any "free speaking" with journalists that doesn't get published? Politicians shouldn't get chummy with journalists. Journalists are supposed to be their watchdog.
"The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail," he wrote.
This is so typical of the elitist, left-wing snobs who dominate the MSM. This is why they, like their communist brethren, will soon be consigned to the ash heap of history.
These people are just now realizing what most people are taught at any early age---
YOU are responsible for what you say---what is this bit about how "now people won't be able to speak freely"--
Of course they will, but they darn sure better be able to back up any and all "facts" and opinions---
I don't seem to recall it this way... If I recall correctly, he said something like if Strom had been president, the United States would be a better place. Nothing about segregation, but that's what it was twisted to mean. Even the least educated in the rhetorical arts would recognize this as hollow praise to an aging, ailing old man who was about to "solve the great mortal mystery", as it were. And, if I recall correctly, the MSM was over inflating the issue like an industrial pneumatic pump on a beach ball.
The irony of this article in contrast with that incredibly ignorant statement speaks not volumes, but libraries.
APf
Everybody HAS to be a journalist these days. We are not getting the full news from the media outlets. We are only getting what they deem exciting or sexy or controversial.
And sometimes, not getting all of the news is a matter of life and death. Like, on your local news station, have you heard about the 25 young Americans who have been abducted (disappeared) -- when they came near the border of Mexico, or went into Mexico? Have you heard yet---(and, will you hear this...) --- that our government is warning young people not to go to Mexico on their Spring Break?
Source of my "unusual" but true knowledge: Fox News channel, Saturday, 2/19/05, the late Geraldo Live show.
(I also, know it's true because I have a brother in the Air National Guard who has gotten the warning from the Gov.)
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Urp! Excuse me while I wipe my lunch off my monitor.
Spoken as though that's a bad thing...
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