Posted on 02/24/2005 6:59:34 AM PST by NYer
CYBERSPACE — During the US presidential election, many heard for the first time about the rise in influence of the “bloggers,” the wave of self-publishing internet journalists whose up-to-the-nanosecond news reporting caused the downfall of CBS’s anchor-Titan Dan Rather.
Now that the bloggers have found themselves powerful enough to depose one of mainstream broadcast media’s most powerful icons, they are realizing their power in other areas. A group of pro-life bloggers has banded together to try to stop the starvation death of Terri Schindler-Schiavo. One of the writers on the group blog, “Tim,” wrote, “Terri's bloggers have a lot of work to do. We need to do what we are doing, which is organizing the largest telephone and email campaign this ole country’s seen in a very long time.”
For some time, concerned pro-lifers and disability-rights activists have followed the story of Terri’s parents’ fight for her life by reading the ‘blogs. One in particular, Fr. Rob Johansen, a friend of Terri and the Schindlers, has posted frequently on Terri’s case. His information has sometimes contradicted or clarified mainstream media’s often imprecise pronouncements.
The term “blog” is short for “weblog” and refers to the type of website that can be updated by the moderator from any internet terminal, carry links to other sites and enable readers to type in their comments. The secret of the power of blogs is the incredibly rapid worldwide exchange of information they make possible when bloggers get connected. In the case of the ProLifeBlogs.com, the specified purpose is to organize into a one-stop blog site where information can be gleaned that is not hampered by mainstream media biases.
Most blogs carry a “blogroll” on a sidebar that connects with other blogs with similar interests. ProLifeBlogs.com has called for bloggers to join their blogroll and will issue a media release when they have reached 100 blogs.
Bloggers talk to each other over the internet and are often able, therefore, to get on-the-spot information — from anywhere in the world and often from eyewitnesses — at a speed that traditional print and broadcast journalists can only envy. Much of the mainstream media information about the war in Iraq, for example, was contradicted by a group of bloggers in Baghdad calling themselves the Iraqi Bloggers.
All journalism, whether print, broadcast, or online, is heavily dependent on the internet, but bloggers are rarely professional journalists and blogging can be done from home with minimal computer skills for little or no cost. One blogger told LifeSiteNews.com “If you have the skills to surf, you have the skills to blog.”
Many bloggers feel that their ‘blogs serve the same purpose as the self-published underground newsletters, called ‘samizdat,’ that helped bring down Eastern European communism in the 1980s. The rapid exchange and dissemination of information at ground level by ordinary people has made it harder for politicians or media or wayward Churchmen to keep their secrets.
True to form, the bloggers have taken up the story of Terri’s blogger-defenders before a press release was officially issued.
See also:
ProLifeBlogs.com
Catholics in the Public Square
Father Johansen’s Blog
AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGH!
I AM SORRY!
I did jump to the wrong conclusion... You're absolutely right. My comments should have been directed at the original poster. I've had my rage-colored glasses on for a couple of weeks over the potential murder of Terri Schiavo and I got nuclear in my reaction.
Please forgive me. And Miss B as well. I apologize sincerely to both of you.
No harm done, We are supposed to be angry over this. When did Death become a right? We are entitled to LIFE liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
In the videos, you can see a smile wake across Terri's face as someone asks how she is.
As Human beings, we can destroy life we can undo life, but we cannot destroy or undo death. Death is the end.
From MarMema
This woman has all the facts, we are slowly being conditioned to be desensitized to death-
Aushchwitz in America
"It took no more than three decades to transform a war crime into an act of compassion, thereby enabling the victors in the war against Nazism to adopt the very practices for which the Nazis had been solemnly condemned at Nuremberg."
The transformation followed thus: The concept that the elderly and terminally ill should have the right to die was promoted in books, newspapers, literature and even entertainment films, the most popular of which were entitled "Ich klage an (I accuse)" and "Mentally Ill."
One euthanasia movie, based on a novel by a National Socialist doctor, actually won a prize at the world-famous Venice Film Festival! Extreme hardship cases were cited, which increasingly convinced the public to morally approve of euthanasia. The medical profession gradually grew accustomed to administering death to patients who, for whatever reasons, felt their low "quality of life" rendered their lives not worth living, or as it was put, lebensunwerten Lebens, (life unworthy of life). "
This movie and The Sea Inside are both getting awards and being promoted as wonderful by the left. It suits their agenda to promote the culture of death. The disabled are first in line, and this is a propaganda consistent with the way the Germans gained acceptance of euthanasia.
I want on the Terri Ping-
Bump
Gotcha! Welcome!
: ^ )
We are the modern-day equivalent of "samizdat". We pass the truth from hand to hand.
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