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April 13, 2005
Blogs vs. Media: Blah, Blah, Blah....
Even when the media try to throw bloggers a bone, they manage to patronize us or get it wrong.
The whole 'Are bloggers the new media?' question has gotten out of hand anyway. To paraphrase a favorite movie quote, why even go there? Not in the least deterred by being late to the party, Jack Shafer trains his jaundiced journalistic eyeball like a laser beam on the Schiavo memo brouhaha, then lobs a few digital spitballs at the retreating backs of bloggers who long since tired of the story:
Not that long ago, you had to be a professional reporter to publish defective copy. Not any more. Thanks to blogs, the journalist monopoly on the wide-scale propagation of blunders, boo-boos, and bloopers has vanished. Now, complete amateurs can embarrass themselves before huge audiences.
Bloggers demonstrated their skill at botching a story last month when a swarm of them accused the Washington Post and ABC News of journalistic malpractice. The two news organizations had reported on the existence of a GOP talking-points memo about Terri Schiavo. The bloggers asserted it was a Ratherian fake. As Eric Boehlert details in Salon, the nay-saying blogs consumed terabytes of bandwidth denouncing the Post and ABC. Powerline, Michelle Malkin, the American Spectator's Prowler, PoliPundit, and Accuracy in Media led the charge.
I suppose I should be touched by Mr. Shafer's selfless gesture of solidarity with the pajamahadeen. How many of his brothers in arms would be so quick to embarass themselves before huge audiences by deliberately making a major mistake of fact in the second paragraph of their intro? Or by artlessly repeating the factual error that got their media compadres into hot water in the first place? Mr. Shafer must be a master of office politics: for the more subtle-minded, he managed to send a subliminal message to both camps ("Psst... I'm in your corner.")
What am I talking about? Well, Mr. Shafer boldly asserts "The bloggers asserted it was a Ratherian fake" before naming an assortment of bloggers, at least one of whom (Michelle Malkin) most emphatically never claimed the memo was a fake. Other bloggers did, but retracted the accusation once the truth came out. Polipundit's "baseless accusation" follows"
...if this memo turns out to not have been written by a Republican then Dems and the media are going to have some serious splainin’ to do. Creating a memo to make Republicans look bad, in a matter of the life and death of an innocent woman, is exploiting that woman’s life and death in a way that far exceeds any political motivations on the part of Congress. Even if the memo was writen by a low level Republican staffer, then it still seems to me that the media has taken a very unfair and giant leap to conclude and imply that it was approved by all Senate Republicans. Either way, the media has a lot to answer for in this matter.
Huh. Seems pretty accurate to me. Downright prescient, in fact. If I had to choose between this blogger's account and those of the Washington Post or ABC, which chose to hype an unauthorized memo handed to them by Democrats that was, as it turns out, written by an unauthorized staffer on unofficial stationery (sans letterhead and riddled with typos and misspellings) as "GOP talking points circulated to Senate Republicans" (the word of said Democrat was, apparently, taken as Holy Gospel - all without the tiresome necessity of actually interviewing any "Senate Republicans"), I believe the blogger wins hands down for accuracy. So much for the "thoroughness and professionalism" of the media.
Or, apparently, of Mr. Shafer, who could not be bothered to follow up with the bloggers he accused before piling on yet another accusation. With stunning irony, he engages in the derivative journalism he later ascribes to bloggers and trusts Salon's Eric Boehlert. Undoubtedly he relied on Salon's notorious fondness for conservatives of all stripes:
After the Post and others proved the legitimacy of the document on April 7, bloggers proved themselves the equals of their mainstream media colleagues once more by ignoring or glossing over their goof. Boehlert writes, "scanning the blogs involved in the memo story, readers found few corrections or references to lessons learned."
Well, Mr. Shafer, it only takes a moment to check the facts, but I suppose this was a bridge too far. Try here. I'm only a part-time, B-list blogger. I don't get paid to write articles. In fact, I barely paid attention to this story, yet in 20 minutes on April 8th I was able to find several examples of bloggers who had corrected the record or were already pondering lessons learned. I wrote my post while drinking my morning coffee -- before I started a ten-hour work day. One of the bloggers 'pondering lessons learned', Michelle Malkin, is one of those you (unfairly) linked to. If I cared enough to manage that, all without benefit of a paycheck, surely you could rouse yourself to check your sources before you made unfounded accusations?
Or was that too much trouble?
You have a point, Mr. Shafer. Bloggers are never going to replace the media. The more responsible among us never claimed we would. Journalists have a way of amplifying the sillier element as though they spoke for us all because that suits your purpose. It makes us look like a howling pack of drooling nutjobs: that much easier to ignore and discredit.
The media as a whole tend to ignore the more measured voices in the blogosphere. I suppose, like the good news coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan, like our Marines and soldiers who build schools and soccer fields, who win medals for feats of bravery that would astound most Americans, they are simply not 'news worthy'. Though here I must be fair and say that Slate has, from time to time, run positive pieces on the military. That is why it is still a daily read for me.
What can bloggers do that the media can't? That's easy. We can hold up a mirror, perform an audit function, break up the stranglehold the mainstream media have had over the news cycle for too long in America. The advent of the Internet has proven that certain stories get killed at the top: Reuters, the AP, the NY Times decide not to run with an issue and it will never see the light of day. Witness the Swift Vets story: their press conference wasn't even attended by most major press groups. One attended and then chose not to write about it! But blogs can break that logjam: they can bring a story to the attention of the public.
People are hungry for news. And they are tired of a small cabal of men deciding what is, or is not, 'all the news fit to print'. News is a business. I suppose networks and the newspapers have every right to make those business decisions: it's their nickel. And if they weren't so sanctimonious about what they were doing, if they didn't pretend not to be biased, perhaps it wouldn't rankle so much. But if they have that right, than we have the right to explore the truth for ourselves. There is no longer any 'ownership' of information. Blogs and the Internet have changed all that, and America is a better place for it.
And if that disturbs some at the Washington Post, ABC, or the New York Times, so be it.
The search for the truth is a messy process. History has shown the media don't get it right either, much of the time. It takes time for the truth to be fully known. Logic dictates that the more people we have looking, the more data points we have to compare and assess, the more likely we are to arrive at the right answer.
That is what blogs have to offer. That, and a measure of honesty, and perhaps even humility, that the mainstream media seem to have lost along the way. We, too, are in danger of losing that quality: we talk about it all the time, as I did in my post last week:
Speaking of honesty, Dan Riehl has a thoughtful piece about the role of bloggers in this story. He asks some hard questions: ones that have occurred to me more than a few times. As blogging matures, we become more and more like the lamestream media. Larger blogs, especially, become the focus of, and targets for, criticism and naturally seek to shield themselves from the moonbattier element. But in so doing, is something lost: that interactive quality that sets blogging apart from the media? And do we need to guard against hubris, the tendency to jump to unfounded conclusions, and our own instinctive biases? Good questions, all.
We're asking the right questions. You just aren't listening.
Posted by Cassandra at April 13, 2005 04:49 AM
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Am flying home this morning. Back later. Meantime, here's some good stuff 'round the blogosphere... Cassandra at Villanous Company takes down Jack Shafer. Tom Maguire takes on Nick Kristof. Blogger radio today: Goldstein and Ardolino host the Citizen J... [Read More]
Tracked on April 14, 2005 09:16 AM
» Blogs and the MSM from The Art of the Blog
Blogs and the MSM
Category: Major Media
(via the ever great Michelle Malkin)
Cassandra over at Villainous Company pens a remarkable and reasoned piece about the whole "Blogs v. the Media" debate.
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The media as a whole tend to i... [Read More]
Tracked on April 14, 2005 04:45 PM
Comments
In spite of the faux pas of the memo, so? It isn't the same as the spurious claims of journalists being targeted, nor is it the same as a memo that was faked and we were most emphatically told it was not.
Bloggers who are responsible also hold themselves to a standard of professional objectivity. You offer YOUR opinion, or lay out your case, but never tell
your audience what to think. When was the last time the MSM did that?
I had another point but it is being elusive....oh
yeah.
Bloggers won't replace the media, but you sure as helk can bet the media is either going to improve the fourth estate because of the competition or they are going to go down in flames.
Posted by: Cricket at April 13, 2005 10:25 AM
So some bloggers got this one wrong. Big fat hairy deal.
Slate is on MSN. NBC is also on MSN (MSNBC). I remember a few years back they used a rocket to blow up a few pickup trucks so they could show the pickups were dangerous. GM sued and won.
No pickups were destroyed with the Schindler memo.
Posted by: Purple Raider at April 13, 2005 02:44 PM
But now it has made a list of famous memos.
I wonder what that would look like:
Famous Faked Memos.
Posted by: Cricket at April 13, 2005 08:38 PM
Has anyone read Hugh Hewitt and his thoughts that there should be a Patron Saint of Blogging? Mark D. Roberts has some suggestions. I particularly liked his suggestion of Martin Luther...
Why, you may wonder, would I have the audacity (or foolishness) to suggest Martin Luther as the patron saint of blogging? Well, it has partly to do with his effort to communicate his ideas in creative ways. You may recall that Luther is said to have started the Protestant Reformation by nailing 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg. Whether he actually did this or not is open to debate, however. What is not uncertain, however, is that Luther was not only a prolific author (this collected works cover several feet of bookshelf space), but also a spontaneous commentator. He didn't blog, of course, but he did express his opinions about all sorts of things, hundreds of which were recorded by his students in little blog-sized bits. If you read a few of these, you'll get the sense that Luther would have been a major player in the blogosphere.
Posted by: MathMom at April 13, 2005 09:43 PM
That is a very interesting idea MathMom and I don't want to make light of it, but I thought some might find it amusing that when I saw Patron capitalized I instantly think of a really good tequila.
Which is more fitting for my level of blogging if you think about it.
Posted by: Pile On® at April 13, 2005 10:23 PM
Posted by: BatSh*tCrazy at April 14, 2005 09:48 AM
Thanks for the vote of confidence :) I think we'll do all right so long as we continue to question the media, each other, and most importantly, ourselves from time to time.
I think it's that last quality the media forgot somewhere along the line.
Posted by: Cassandra at April 14, 2005 09:55 AM
Hi,
Great article. Not only did Shafer slip up with the Ratherian reference, but he also refered to the "GOP talking-points memo about Terri Schiavo," which implies an official GOP sponsored memo. As you state, this was the work of one clueless staffer.
Posted by: John Tweedy at April 14, 2005 11:11 AM
The thing that is so egregious about all of this is that to be entirely fair, it's not out of the realm of possibility that this staffer was acting under some kind of instruction. But that is supposition, not fact.
And last time I checked, the media were supposed to be reporting the facts, not engaging in political mud-slinging or passing on unsubstantiated rumors from the DNC.
Which, as it turns out, is exactly what they did. And then they tried to cover it up. At least Mike Allen had the grace to ask for a retraction once it all finally came out. That's more than the management at the Post or ABC had the honesty to do.
Posted by: Cassandra at April 14, 2005 11:18 AM