Who listens to blogging heads?

LA Times ^ | 13 July 2008 | John Sides and Eric Lawrence

[shrinkermd]

Political blog readers appear to be a minority of a minority.

[ken21]

obviously the los angeles times last week did not read the

free republic blogs that

showed iran’s missles were photoshopped!

and, so they printed the photoshopped photos on the front page, above the fold.

how embarrassing!

[Carry_Okie]

The trend is as I had suspected. You can find anything you want to hear on the Internet, complete with supporting "facts." It will balkanize politics around preexisting dispositions more than unify it around objective truth.

[Bob J]

CO, when has politics ever been about objective truth?

[Carry_Okie]

CO, when has politics ever been about objective truth?

When it has hard consequences.

[clockwise]

This survey is almost two years old. It would be interesting to see how much change there has been since Fall 2006.

[Bob J]

I think that is when it is least objective.

[Ben Ficklin]

While there is a sizable number congregating in places where they can hear what they want to hear, you shouldn't underestimate the number who are searching out not just two sides of the issue, but also the third side.

And that includes a few at FR.

[Carry_Okie]

but also the third side.

Shades of Alvin Toffler.

It suits you.

[proxy_user]

The idea is not to get mass readership, but to slip these ideas into circulation.

This is kind of like the Velvet Underground. As used to be said, they sold very few records, but everyone who bought one started a band.

[Bob J]

That article was nothing more than a feel good effort from an influential newspaper frightened about losing it’s influence.

Notice they didn’t compare the increase in blog or internet news reading with their own decline in subscriptions. That would be a telling side by side stat. They also don’t mention that ten years ago NOBODY was reading blogs, now 34% do and 14% get their political news from the internet. They also don’t address the non-blog influence on news and politics from the internet.

It’s nothing more than the LA Times whistling past the graveyard.

[Chode]

who listens to BlogHeads???

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

The trend is as I had suspected. You can find anything you want to hear on the Internet, complete with supporting "facts." It will balkanize politics around preexisting dispositions more than unify it around objective truth.

It will "balkanize" politics between liars and honest men. Between delusion and reality.

Both the honest man and the liar are concerned with the truth. One to propagate it, and the other to subvert it.

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

IOW. Liars and the deluded will propagate delusions and clear thinking honest men will propagate reality.

[Carry_Okie]

It will "balkanize" politics between liars and honest men.

The deluded are provisioned with loyalties, metrics, truisms, and language that render them incapable of recognizing the truth even if they seek it. They have no basis for knowing what honesty requires.

[Ben Ficklin]

I'm not referring to whether you read the LA Times paper or the LA Times website.

For example.

On the Ramos Compean issue, one could get their info from LAT, or from FR-WND-JBS, or from the trial transcript at the DOJ website. Or some combination there-of.

Those who don't want to hear what the transcript says, won't read it.

Another example.

Reality, as determined at FR, depends on the thread. If a thread is bumped up many times and cross-linked to other threads, it is reality. OTOH, a thread that no one bumps or replies to dies away quickly and is not reality.

[Ben Ficklin]

I would say it suits you more than me.

[Wilhelm Tell]

In the post-modernist age, people do not believe in such a thing as objective truth. This is very strong among the left but this mindset may also eventually affect the right. I do not think it is possible for most people to deny objective reality without our society falling into a third-world status. The college-indoctrinated (I do not say educated) people who claim that there is no objective reality are modern-day savages, and they will un-do thousands of years of learning.

[GWMcClintock]

“who listens to BlogHeads???”

Perhaps Dan Rather wishes he would’ve!

[Carry_Okie]

The college-indoctrinated (I do not say educated) people who claim that there is no objective reality are modern-day savages, and they will un-do thousands of years of learning.

Isn't that the objective?