Posted on 10/18/2008 11:49:07 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
Yada, yada, yada.
~~snip~~
The growing power of rumor is part of a much larger transformation in the way that voters receive information about politics. The old model was a vertical one, where professional journalists delivered their reports to a largely passive audience through television or newspapers. The new model is horizontal, where folks get information from each other and actively pass it on, through e-mail, text messages and viral videos. Everyone is a potential broadcaster.
This "democratization of information" has many benefits - more sources, more perspectives, more choices. In a forum Steve moderated for The International Journal of Press/Politics, Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, offered two examples: the incendiary sermons of Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and Obama's speech on race and religion.
"Millions more people will see and observe and analyze those incidents online than would ever tune into a newscast showing the clips," Jurkowitz said. "So you are dramatically expanding the universe. (And) people can make up their own minds without any kind of media mediation whatsoever."
But there's also a dark side to this horizontal system. Without "media mediation," without the persistent truth-telling, fact-checking efforts of well-trained professionals, falsehoods can flourish.
The "he's an Arab" smear reached so widely that the New York Times devoted a front-page story to its origins. Its conclusion: After the allegations first appeared in 2004, they were picked up by the conservative Web site FreeRepublic.com "and spread steadily as others elaborated on its claims over the years in e-mail messages, Web sites, and books."
Said Danielle Allen, a Princeton professor who has studied the episode: "It's an example of how the Internet has given power to sources we would have never taken seriously at another point in time."
(Excerpt) Read more at metrowestdailynews.com:80 ...
Yes, Cokie, I see your point. We private citizens should just sit down and shut up and let the truth telling professionals of the left stream media decide what's fit to print.
By the way, Free Republic is not a newspaper. We did not write the story in question, nor did we "pick it up," or vouch for its accuracy. We are a noncommercial discussion forum open to the general public. Apparently, the story in question was a press release that a member of the general public posted to FR in 1994 for discussion purposes. And it languished in the backwater archives of FR until some dimwitted, but sharp-eyed left stream reporter "discovered" it via google. Doubt it had any influence on the raging Barak Hussein Obama was born a Muslim rumor whatsoever.
However, as it turns out, our young Barak Hussein really was born to a Muslim and raised in his early years as a Muslim. It's in all the papers. Must be true.
Oh yes, the almighty truth-telling fact-checking mainstream media. I have two words for them. "Dan Rather".
-ccm
LOL!
Some now very irrelevant yearnalist has his knickers in a knot!
Because the professional journalists do such a thorough job.
The Internet has exposed their fake, but accurate brand of reporting. And now we are documenting your bias in the campaign for your Metrosexual Messiah.
You people are scum and are staring down the end of your house of cards. You traitorous frauds.
My, they think highly of themselves. What absolute BS.
Good one, Jim. God bless you.
Cokie used to at least exhibit
a semblance of reason and sense.
Wonder how she feels, as a Roman
Catholic, whose own mother was U.S.
Ambassador to the Vatican, about
Obama’s determination to legislate
the medical neglect, unto death, of
those innocent babes who miraculously
survive an abortion.
Now I’m really confused. I read a liberal piece the other day that said Obama’s father was an Arab. Does anyone REALLY know who the hell Obama is? Or what his middle name really is? I guess I’ll just start calling him “The Mystery Man.”
I have two more words... Fifth Column.
Steve.
The audacity of these people grows exponentially every hour.
Hope you're doing well Jim.
FMCDH(BITS)
LOL!
"Only people with urnialism degrees can see and tell the truth. The rest of you idiots, just shut up and listen."
we could ask the same of the mainstream media whom without Obama would still be a state senator from the hood.
out here on the internet, the info media is more often than not pretty open about the political posture whether us or even the kossacks
the blind arrogance of these pompous arses is insulting....and Cokie is a pox on the fine state of Louisiana.
What’s this!? Cokie is using “In the tank for Obama” Danielle Allen, the “AA Genius” Professor of Princeton as a resource!?
This doesn’t speak well of Cokie’s journalistic discretion.
Sounds like Cokie is having a tiny tantrum.
“But there’s also a dark side to this horizontal system. Without “media mediation,” without the persistent truth-telling, fact-checking efforts of well-trained professionals, falsehoods can flourish.”
So She and steve (don’t you just love the intimacy?) now hold the gatekeys to the mysteries of spin in a world suddenly brought flat again at light speed times keyboard angst; how to hold these wild thoughts, some spewed, some measured out one dose at a time, all squeezing together in the millisecond of eternity between headline and epilogue - at bay until Cokey and steve tell us what it was that we couldn’t possibly have had time to read, let alone analyze.
Guess what, She has said it before, each time someone foolishly let her too close to a keyboard for the world’s own good, this child of privilege, this smiling southern spit of a sweet young thing clinging like the last peach after the first hard frost, it’s dewy softness turning overnight into mush, mewing sweetly in our ears one last time - look at meee!, please???
Thank you Jim! Thank you.
Mrs. Roberts is only mourning her prior days of relevance.
Am I missing something? "After the allegations first appeared in 2004 ??? WHERE DID THEY FIRST APPEAR??
I like the way they try to demonize FreeRepublic. A forum where people discuss everything. Did the front-page story of the New York Times determine where the "rumor" originated or not?
BTW Did the New York Times locate Barack Hussein Obama's original birth certificate yet??
I just call him Bill Ayers' friend, Barack.
This is reminiscent of the attempted Communist coup against Gorbachev. At that time, Western reporters were able to get the word out via e-mail and satellite phones. The coup plotters tried sending power surges out to try to disable reporters’ PC’s but ultimately they were unable to stop the truth from getting out—and in.
Today’s MSM hate the Internet for precisely the same reason: it lets the truth both in and out and prevents them from completely brainwashing people with their Marxist agenda. They would shut us down if they could. That is the extent of their integrity (which is to say, they have none at all).
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