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September 19, 2004

The Senility of Old Media

During the first Gulf war, the ratings of talk radio (lead by Rush Limbaugh) took off. Indeed, "talk" saved radio from oblivion. Old Media was aghast. Even today, articles about talk radio appearing in Old Media take a condescending view even as they grudgingly admit its impact. We even witnessed Billy Jeff blaming "hate radio" for people not going along with his programs. Old Media hasn't the nerve come to grips with why talk radio (and now FoxNews) is popular. They keep running with the meme that it is just one big Vast Rightwing Conspiracy that most citizens ("sheeple") are too stupid to understand. Again, the basic arrogance and elitism of Old Media blinds them to the "why." And now it looks like this same tact will be followed by Old Media and how they characterize the Internet and bloggers. First case-in-point comes from Allah.

He writes of receiving a press release from Time:

Here's a snippet from the article as reprinted in the press release:

Bush staff members rely on technorati.com and truthlaidbear.com, which track political blogs and websites to see what items in local papers, on websites or in blogs are getting the most hits. "If a story moves up through the rankings and linking we can know," says one of the Bush staff members assigned to alert the rest of the team about which stories are moving through the blogosphere. "We can get indicators about stories before they break elsewhere. It's like an early warning system."

In other words, the Bush camp reads blogs to get a sense of what people are talking about. Very smart on their part. So what headline does Time uncork to describe this sinister blog-reading phenomenon?

Bush Campaign Keeping Close Eye on Blogs,
Using Them To Mainline Information to the G.O.P. Faithful

Time turns the Bush staffers use of the Internet bloggers on its head.

In another case, Old Media, ten days out since the CBS/Rather/Killian_memo_hoax story first broke, is finally covering the story in depth and ignoring or minimizing the role of bloggers in breaking the story. Charles Johnson was one of the two sites that first got the story out. Charles was the first (the other site, Powerline, also notices the WaPo omission) to do an overlay comparison between one of the hoax memos and memo created in MSWord with default settings and coming up with a match. Today the Washington Post runs a rather thorough article tracking the timeline of the hoax, but the only nod to those who broke the story and did the heavy lifting of forensic investigation is this paragraph on page four of the online version

These software experts say differences in font widths and printing styles make it impossible to replicate the CBS documents using the printing technology available in the early 1970s. By contrast, reasonably competent computer enthusiasts have created nearly exact replicas of the documents in 15 minutes employing default settings for Microsoft Word and the widely used Times New Roman font.

That's it. Ten days out and that's all the Old Media wants to begrudgingly credit "reasonably competent computer enthusiasts" with.

Damn! They didn't mention our pajamas, either!

UPDATE: Bill of INDC journal succinctly describes the role of bloggers:

A blogger is more analogous to a single reporter than he or she is to a news organization. Please do not rely on me for all of your information needs.

Hear, hear! Bloggers are not looking to be the "sole" source of "All the news thats fit to print" [ahem]. They truly are engaged in democratic, cooperative endeavor, where each individual brings their singular talent to the group. Synergy in real-time action.


Posted by Darleen at September 19, 2004 09:58 AM

Comments

"Popular" doesn't mean "true" or "reliable," of course. I'd like to see media reform with some way to test and report accuracy of news media. I wish more news figures asked the question "is it true?" instead of just presenting opinions.

Investigative journalism is nearly extinct. We need accurate news to make good decisions, but it's so often misleading. It's so easy for media to mislead viewers, and shape their opinions, but no real consequences for doing it.

Posted by: Binacontenda at September 20, 2004 01:01 AM

Scott

What you are getting in the blogsphere right now is the equivalent of peer reviewing, something that has been missing for sometime within the Old Media.

Posted by: Darleen at September 20, 2004 08:15 AM

Well, it's not like scientific peer review, because there is no authority or standard to ensure accuracy. There is no requirement for testing or verification. It's just a bunch of people giving their opinions.

In the scientific community, there are real consequences for being wrong, like losing your career. There are rewards for being right, like respect and better paying work.

In media, if you're wrong about, say, WMD's in Iraq, there are no consequences. Unless, of course, you are wrong about something which attacks the government. If it's Bush.

The blogosphere is as much "peer review" as a bunch of people talking in a room. It's all just opinion.

Posted by: Binacontenda at September 23, 2004 10:30 PM