you can see cartoons of this here: IowaPresidentialWatch.com
Posted on 09/15/2004 2:39:55 PM PDT by alydar
A revolution is sweeping the American media that will eventually spread to this part of the world.
What is happening is that for the first time in decades, if not ever, the power of the mainstream media (MSM) in the United States is being seriously challenged by a mostly ragtag army of outsiders armed with little more than the internet. The age of the blogger is upon us.
A blogger is someone who keeps a web-log, updated on an almost daily basis. They offer blow-by-blow commentary on current events. They can do so at almost no cost and their sites can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection anywhere in the world. Basically the internet has eliminated the cost of entry into the world of media and commentary at a stroke.
Last week we had a clear demonstration of blogger power.
CBS broke a story based on a document purporting to blow further holes in George Bush's National Guards record. This was to be the big counteroffensive against Bush following the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Kerry.
The trouble is, it fizzled out in no time. Why? Certainly it was not because of the MSM, which showed no desire to subject the story to critical scrutiny, seeing as it was helping their man, John Kerry.
Instead it was left up to the bloggers to do that. As soon as the story broke they pounced on it and quickly showed that the document upon which CBS based its story was in all likelihood a forgery.
CBS and its unbelievably pompous anchorman, Dan Rather, have tried their best to defend the story but it is now all but dead and with it possibly Kerry's chance of election.
This sort of thing has never happened before because no one was around to call the MSM to account before.
The MSM in the US is liberal with few exceptions and will gladly run stories that embarrass the Republicans and suppress stories that will embarrass the Democrats. But now with the bloggers on the scene, the bias of the MSM is being revealed daily and the MSM can't stand it.
Let's broaden out the perspective here. As others have pointed out, what is happening to the MSM is roughly analogous to what happened to the Catholic Church when the printing press was invented. Up to that point the Catholic church controlled most of the available bibles and therefore the theological interpretations of the Bible.
This gave it great power in a Europe that was still very religious-minded.
Then the printing press arrived and put the Bible in the hands of vast numbers of people who could read it for themselves and interpret it in their own way. Before it knew it, the Catholic Church was faced with the Reformation, and not long after that the continuing proliferation of Protestant churches began in earnest. The Catholic Church had lost its monopoly because it lost control of the Bible.
Similarly the MSM is now losing its monopoly over the news. Before the arrival of the bloggers the vast majority of people had to rely on CBS, NBC, ABC, and the mostly liberal print media, dominated by papers such as the New York Times, for their daily news. Almost as importantly, they also relied on these outlets for their interpretation of the news.
Now the proliferating number of bloggers is directly challenging not only the MSM's interpretation of the news, but also what it decides should be news and what shouldn't be news. Some bloggers actually break news, e.g. the Drudge Report, which broke the Monica Lewinski story.
This is devastating for both the MSM and the Democrats, who have long been given a more or less free pass by the MSM. Never again will it dominate the news as it once did. Those days are gone and in the years to come its power will diminish and, with it, its influence.
I came across an ad at the weekend that showed a man skewered by a woman's high heel. A striking image to be sure. Men are an easy-going lot about these things. We treat them as a joke. However, it's easy to imagine the reaction of feminist groups if an ad showed a woman being crushed under a man's heel.
Not much humour in those quarters.
Emergent intelligence BUMP.
"pounced" -- I like that!
Of all the nerve...our Jammies are not ragtag!!!
Ouch. It's pretty bad when a foreigner sees the obviousness of the bias and can state it so plainly.
"They can do so at almost no cost"
Yeah, except in time.
I'm sure Rathergate is important in some ways, but it'd be nice if all those blogs that are spending all this time on that could be encouraged to cover things that are a bit more important.
THAT is an understatement.
BBC, Guardian & friends.
Be afraid, be very very afraid.
The Bloggers are coming! The Bloggers are coming!
ping
I just looked up pompous in the dictionary....lo and behold, there was a picture of Rather.
Old Media. We're the MSM
...and very comfy PJ's.
"pounced" -- I like that!
I read an article recently describing it as "skewered" - on the antlers of buckhead I guess!
The Euro-elites are going to take a really big hit if this catches on over there.
I WANT THAT FOR A BUMPER STICKER!
This is the new "paradigm" I mentioned the other day.
I do believe the first stirrings of speculation regarding the legitimacy of the CBS documents, began right here - I am proud to claim - on FREE REPUBLIC.COM.
The first issue of National Review declares conservatives to stand up to the march of liberal history yelling STOP!
LOL!
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