Posted on 12/31/2005 6:38:42 AM PST by Loyal Buckeye
Of all the stories leading America’s annual greatest-hits list, the one that subsumes the rest is the evolution of information in the Age of Blogging.
Not since the birth of the printing press have our lives been so dramatically affected by the way we create and consume information.
What is wonderful and miraculous about the Internet needs little elaboration. We all marvel at the ease with which we can access information, whether reading government documents previously available only to a few, or tracking down old friends and new enemies.
It is this latter – our new enemies – that interests me most. I don’t mean al-Qaida or Osama bin Laden, but the less visible, insidious enemies of decency, humanity and civility: the angry offspring of narcissism’s quickie marriage to instant gratification.
There’s something frankly creepy about the explosion we now call the blogosphere – the "electroniverse" where recently wired squatters set up new camps each day. As I write, the number of blogs (Web logs) and bloggers (those who blog) is estimated in the tens of millions worldwide.
Although I’ve been a blog fan since the beginning, and have written favorably about the value added to journalism and public knowledge thanks to the new "citizen journalist," I’m also wary of power untempered by restraint and accountability.
Say what you will about the mainstream media, but no industry agonizes more about how to improve its product, police its members and better serve its communities. Newspapers are filled with carpal-tunneled wretches, overworked and underpaid, who suffer near-pathological allegiance to getting it right.
That a Jayson Blair of The New York Times surfaces now and then as a plagiarist or a fabricator ultimately is testament to the high standards tens of thousands of others strive to uphold each day without recognition. Blair is infamous, but also gone.
Bloggers persist no matter their contributions or quality, though most would have little to occupy their time were the mainstream media to disappear tomorrow. Some bloggers do their own reporting, but most rely on mainstream reporters to do the heavy lifting. Some bloggers also offer superb commentary, but most buzz and blurt like caffeinated adolescents.
Even so, they hold the same megaphone as the adults and enjoy perceived credibility owing to membership in the larger world of blog grown-ups. These effete and often clever baby "bloggies" are rich in time and toys, but bereft of adult supervision.
Spoiled and undisciplined, they have seized the stage, a privilege granted not by years in the trenches, but by virtue of a three-pronged plug and the miracle of WiFi. They play tag team with hyperlinks ("I’ll say you’re important if you’ll say I’m important") and shriek "Gotcha!" when they catch some weary wage earner in a mistake or oversight. Plenty smart but lacking in wisdom, they possess the power of a forum, but neither the maturity nor humility that years of experience impose.
Each time I wander into blogdom, I’m reminded of the savage children stranded on an island in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Without adult supervision, they organize themselves into rival tribes, learn to hunt and kill, and eventually become murderous barbarians in the absence of a civilizing structure.
What Golding demonstrated and what we’re witnessing as the blogosphere’s offspring multiply is that people tend to abuse power when it is unearned and will bring down others to enhance themselves. Likewise, many bloggers seek the destruction of others for their own self-aggrandizement. When a mainstream journalist stumbles, they pile on like so many savages, hoisting his or her head on a bloody stick as Golding’s children did the fly-covered head of a butchered sow.
Schadenfreude – pleasure in others’ misfortunes – has become the new barbarity on an island called Blog. When someone trips, whether Dan Rather or Judith Miller, bloggers are slavering for a public flogging. Incivility is their weapon and humanity their victim.
I mean no disrespect to the many brilliant people out there – professors, lawyers, doctors, philosophers, scientists and journalists who also happen to blog. But we should beware and resist the rest of the egogratifying rabble who contribute only snark, sass and destruction.
We can’t silence them, but for civilization’s sake and the integrity of information by which we all live or die, we can and should ignore them.
"people tend to abuse power when it is UNEARNED..."
In other words, do NOT fear the MSM, and do NOT fear the government. It is only these new people who need to be feared. EARNED power is NEVER abused. Stupid slut whore.
This guys a genius
That is precisely the point. Accountability and power has shifted from the editor to the reader. As the Guttenberg Bible (and the printing press) changed the world, so will the blogosphere and the internet.
Jealousy is an ugly emotion Kathleen
I completely disagree with her, but you proved her point about decency and civility.
We're just doing the jobs the journalists don't want to do.
B I N G O !
And Dan Rather and Mary Mapes of See-BS, and Jayson Blair and Howell Raines at the NYT are great examples of this? Not to mention the NYT editing a dead Marine's posthumous e-mail home to his girl to fit their bias? Pshaw!
Here is some of what the Media wants you to buy.
NBC Draws Fire for Book of Daniel ^see article on this site.
looks like sumb'dy squeezed her balllllls! He, he
So much for the ratssssy "credibility"
From the article, I'd change your substitution to "We can't silence them [egogratifying rabble who contribute only snark, sass and destruction], but for civilization's sake and the integrity of information by which we all live or die, we can and should ignore them."
Fortunately, what the author advicates happens naturally, as most readers DO dismiss the snarks, sasses and twits. And so, the force of cross checking and citaton holds both the legacy media and the new media accountable for accuracy of fact, and intellectual honesty in analysis. Everybody wins!
The overall impression I have with this article is that the author feels blogs are putting journalists under a very powerful microscope and she doesn't like it. However, examples of blatantly bad journalism from people like Dan Rather, who have a reputation of being at the top of their field and at the pinnacles of their careers, shows the bias this author really has. I sense journalist frustration with the intense scutiny of the blogs as legitimate. No one wants their job to be under that level of scutiny, nor will any professional, regardless of their field, ever be error free. A true professional should take such criticism in stride and endeavor to correct his mistakes and improve their trade. Complaining about being 'caught' in a mistake is not a professional response, but an emotional outburst. With that in mind, if a journalists corrects their mistake, then a professional blog that spotted this mistake has the responsibility to acknowledge that correction. Overall, I hope that the dynamics of the blogs helps both evolve to higher standards.
This is from scrappleface, right?
Stumble? As in revealing national security measures being used to keep the American people safe?
Stumble? As in revealing to the enemy the existance of prisons where the most dangerous terrorists are being held so the terrorists can mount attacks against the countries that are holding them?
Some people are fools year 'round.
I have not found this to be the case. Neither with the MSM nor with my limited, but personal, experience with the local media.
For your information, Cathy dear: The Media that survive in the age of bloggers, will be those who print the unvarnished and unspun, truth.
How dare we of the bloggosphere throw stones at the almighty journalists of Mount Olympus?
===
[That is what the MSM 'journalists' seem to think. They don't like being challenged -- by the Pajama Brigade sitting in from of our computers. They don't like being questioned about the accuracy of their reporting. They don't like being called to task when their reporting is so overtly biased. After all, as ole Dan cried: It is fake, but accurate!!!]
I just performed a Google search on the subject and found over 116,000,000 blogs out there. They range in interest from personal, cooking, gardening, pet care, weather and political commentary. Using key words like "breaking news" and "news + blogging + links" I located over 32 Million Blogging Sites in cyberspace. Thank God for bloggers.
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