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How to Get Attention
National Politics, Technology Comments (5)
This past election cycle really saw the web log (or “blog”) come into its own. Blogs now apparently have the power to make and break election candidates and drive stories on their own.
President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign was saved by bloggers finding the holes in the CBS “false but accurate” manufactured memoranda supposedly from the President’s Air National Guard days. Without the efforts of bloggers to expose the forgeries, the story in the hands of the mainstream media might have blown up into something that would have resulted in a John Kerry presidency.
But, the Wall Street Journal’s online edition has pointed out that someone might have lost an election through the efforts of bloggers. That person is none other than former Senate minority leader Tom Daschle.
According to John Fund, South Dakota Republicans became frustrated by perceived bias by the Sioux Falls Argus Leader (the only daily newspaper in South Dakota with a state-wide circulation). What was their reaction? Take it online.
Recently, I did a couple of posts on the damage done to a small town fertilizer company by shoddy reporting. A small fertilizer company was accused of selling chemicals used in the manufacture of massive explosives, like those used at Oklahoma City. The fact was, though, that the fertilizer company had sold the reporter 500 pounds of an extremely common 20-10-10 fertilizer. And I’ve gotten many hits on those stories from news outlets, not just casual readers.
No longer do the great media houses (of either national or regional stature) have the ability to dictate the flow or content of stories. Common people have the ability to write (instead of fight) back and they’re doing just that. And to great effect, too:
Patrick Lalley, the Argus Leader’s assistant managing editor, acknowledges that the blogs had an impact on how his paper covered the Senate race. They certainly got under the skin of some of the paper’s executives. Randell Beck, executive editor of the Argus Leader, called some of the bloggers work “crap” and said they represented an organized effort by conservatives to discredit his paper. In July, he explained to readers that “true believers of one stripe or another, no longer content to merely bore spouses and neighbors with their nutty opinions, can now spew forth on their own blogs, thereby playing a pivotal role in creating the polarized climate that dominates debate on nearly every national issue. If Hitler were alive today, he’d have his own blog.”
And perhaps he’s right. If Hitler were really alive today, though, he’d likely be much more concerned with how to run his rather expansive empire. But the real swipe here is against “true believers,” that is, those people who hold to certain ideologies because they think those ideologies will make the world a better place or will benefit them personally. Perhaps much like a newsroom editor might think that being true to the favorite candidate might get them better, juicier scoops during the next term?
The real news here is that bloggers were able to force a change in the reporting by a mainstream source. This is, or should be, reflective of the greatest fear of mainstream reporters: the loss of eyeballs to online sources. To combat this they must be watching those online sources themselves. They get to see the deconstruction of their own stories by the hoi polloi, not competing professional journalists. When those deconstructions are accurate, people soon begin deciding to stop viewing the mainstream sources and begin watching the more accurate alternate news sources, even if they are not as “professional.”
People need not take the spin any longer. They now can fight back with the truth.
MickC @ December 21, 2004
How to Get Attention
This past election cycle really saw the web log (or “blog”) come into its own. Blogs now apparently have the power to make and break election candidates and drive stories on their own….
Fond as I am of blogs and bloggers, I think it’s a little extreme to suggest that blogs saved the election for Bush. Passionate bloggers were posting madly on both sides of the political fence: but the primary source of information and analysis for bloggers remains stories culled from mainstream media, print and broadcast…including the memo brouhaha.
Blogs are like a particularly active op-ed page: they are not journalism.
It’s funny because as I was reading this by Mick, I was thinking of the myriad of times Bal and I have had that same discussion. Blogs are generally not journalism, and if the msm decided one day to shutter all outlets (print, radio, tv), 98% of the bloggers in existence would have no material whatsoever, and the 2% who write “original articles” would have just as little to say because even when it’s original it’s based on something in the news, so unless people are out pavement pounding, taking pictures, and video, and using all of their own content, the idea that blogs represent journalism is a bit overwrought.
I’d go for the suggestion that blogs represent a kind of universal peer review, a more rigorous level of scrutiny than journalists have been accustomed to in the past. You have to be MUCH more careful about what you say/broadcast/write, because there is NO delay between the statement and feedback, and any error…particularly on an issue where there’s serious divergence of views…is going to be spotted.
By and large you are both correct. But notice what I’m saying here:
That is, blogs have the apparent ability to shape the direction that news stories take. This certainly happened with the CBS memos. Without the efforts of blogs like Powerline and INDC the story would not ever have turned to the forgeries. The story would have stayed centered on President Bush’s ANG service.