The Implosion of the Media, and Why its the Bloggers Fault

Just Kidding--Well, The "Experts" Aren't

I had an interesting conversation with fellow soldier and blogger Scott D, (I owed him that since he encouraged me to write a post about this--shamless friendly plug--you're welcome Scott!) about an editorial and related report that hit the news this weekend. Its a stunning example of the denial and arrogance of the traditional media.

The editorial is titled State of the Media at a critical time, and is more noteworthy for its exclusions that the actual text. Nowhere in the editorial will you find a reference to the glaring mistakes, both intentional and systemic, of the big media outlets that have been exposed by the blogosphere, and the blogoshere alone. Without blogs of all kinds and political ideologies, at least two outright conspiracies (CBS and Dan Rather, and the Jeff Gannon incidents) would have gone unnoticed by all.

And yet, in their infinite arrogance, whenever you see forums or articles of discussion of this subject, its centered around the alleged irresponsibility of bloggers, not the open misleading, and sometimes criminal actions of the traditional media. The media personalities that appear in these discussions revel in their "duty" of giving the facts to the people to keep the public informed, yet they defend their institutions, no matter how many problems are exposed (from the conspiracy of the CBS incident, to the fad of mutating reports through exclusion of facts to push an agenda).

For all you media types, its way past time to take responsibility for the failures of your institutions, and stop trying to concentrate on imagined new issues attached to the evil blogosphere. It has not been done--the producers responsible for meeting with Kerry campaign officials in the CBS debacle refuse to leave their posts, so the fact that Dan Rather left is not good enough; Rather read a teleprompter, but only made the mistake of trusting the producers that 'produce' the news at CBS. So, the source of the problem is still in power at that outlet.

So, shut your mouth, and attend to your own affairs before you deal with concocted moral questions in an arena (internet) that doesn't play a part in your company. Why don't you media personalities give we bloggers the same freedom you persistently ask for: the ability to police ourselves. We'll see how that works out for us. So far, so good.

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For most of our history, when a SME (subject matter expert) heard CBS news say something he knew was 100% wrong or intentionally misleading, all he could do was write a letter to the station (ignored), yell out loud (waking up the kids, scaring the dog, and bothering the wife), or throw something at the TV ($$$).

Now days, he can go on-line, blog his specific knowledge of the issue, and watch while thousands either confirm, endorse, or add to his knowledge. Once you have a few thousand people validate your argument (and if you are wrong, you know REAL fast)then it gets picked up by an uberblogger and before he knows it; the shmuck that once just threw a pillow at Dan Rather's image on TV, has now caused CBS to be brought to its knees.

All this happens in the blink of an eye. Due to the joys of the internet, the MSM can no longer "get away with it." That is what torques them off. Like the French nobility in the late 1700s, their way of life is being brought down around them by peasants, and they don't know what to do but cluck-cluck to each other. Ain't life grand?!?

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How naive we are to expect the MSM actually to ignore the vast rightwing conspiracy, now arrayed on the internet and to focus on the MSM's own failures. They're in a defensive crouch, and they don't seem to have the sense to retrench. All that can do is attack, attack, attack. That's okay. What's scary is that they want to use the Legislature to shut the blogosphere down, which is not okay, and which has huge free speech implications.

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