Howard Fineman says:
A political party is dying before our eyes — and I don’t mean the Democrats. I’m talking about the “mainstream media,” which is being destroyed by the opposition (or worse, the casual disdain) of George Bush’s Republican Party; by competition from other news outlets (led by the internet and Fox’s canny Roger Ailes); and by its own fraying journalistic standards. At the height of its power, the AMMP (the American Mainstream Media Party) helped validate the civil rights movement, end a war and oust a power-mad president. But all that is ancient history….Were Dan Rather and Mary Mapes after the truth or victory when they broadcast their egregiously sloppy story about Bush’s National Guard Service? The moment it made air it began to fall apart, and eventually was shredded by factions within the AMMP itself, conservative national outlets and by the new opposition party that is emerging: The Blogger Nation. It’s hard to know now who, if anyone, in the “media” has any credibility.
It’s a little sour, gloomy and pessimistically written, but Fineman gets it. This is an exciting time for blogging, my friends.
Are some of you old enough to remember the advent of television? Radio? I wasn’t. By the time I came along, both were entrenched in the culture. I was around for the arrival of the computing revolution. When Apple II computers hit the classroom scene, I avoided them just like the rest of the technophobes. But enough of the 80s way-back machine. Ancient history.
YOU SHOULD BE BLOGGING, if you’re not already. I guess that was loud enough. For those of us still unborn in the 30s, 40s, 50s and part of the 60s, we finally have an invention, or whatever it’s called, that we can call our own: the Internet, or more specifically, blogging. Join the new medium now while it’s still in its infancy.
You know this blogging thing must be revolutionary when mainstream media (”legacy media” is becoming the preferred term) are talking and writing about what bloggers did to CBS. Says the Oakland Press:
It should not have been a great surprise that CBS tried to disguise a partisan political attack as a legitimate news story. TV news always has put a lot of opinion on the air as fact. The shock is that they didn’t get away with this time.The reason is that Internet blogs have drastically changed the nature of the national media scene. Now anybody can participate in news coverage and commentary on a real-time basis.
CBS was unmasked by people who put up Internet statements challenging the claim that the memos were authentic.
Then the traditional media noticed and also used and confirmed the new information. It took less than a day for that Internet action to reduce virtually all aspects of the “60 Minutes” report to embarrassing rubble.
That’s the power of the blog, which cannot be overstated.
Many people have asked me how to start a blog, not just the mechanics of setting it up but what to say and how to say it. That part is up to you, but I recommend Joe Carter’s “How to Start a Blog” series. I plan to write one of my own as soon as I’m finished reading the Rathergate report and Hugh Hewitt’s new book, BLOG: Understand the Information Reformation.
That’s all I have time for this morning. Just remember this:
“[T]he powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.”
— Walt Whitman, “Oh Me! Oh Life!,” from Leaves of Grass
A Vision of Long Ago and My Religious Friends
There was once a very enlightened Buddhist yogi who had an extraordinary vision. He is a tulku, one of the yogis who comes back regularly to help us, like the Dalai Lama. You can read about his latest manifestation here. But I want to tell you about a …
Trackback by A Straight Shot Of Politics — 01.12.05 @ 11:10 am
Hi, La Shawn!
I would normally track back to one of your more Christian posts, but politics and media have overwhelmed your blog recently, so please forgive me for a rather off-topic link!
Comment by Joseph Marshall — 01.12.05 @ 11:12 am
‘It’s a little sour, gloomy and pessimistically written, but Fineman gets it. This is an exciting time for blogging, my friends.’
I don’t understand. A program gets something wrong and then people are retired and punished for it. Thats a sign of the strength of the system, not its weakness.
I’d say signs of weakness are that judith miller still has a job.
Comment by actus — 01.12.05 @ 11:16 am
Blogs. Good Or Bad? It’s All About Perspective.
Someone once said that behaviour is defined as how we act when others are around, but character is measured by what we do when we think that no one is paying attention.
If that is indeed the truth, then blogs stand poised to render behaviour nearly …
Trackback by Alternaview — 01.12.05 @ 12:42 pm
And if they had cleaned house of their own accord, I’d agree with you actus.
That they only took action after bloggers shined sunlight into CBS’s newsroom puts the lie to that assertion.
Af for Miller… how does anyone at the NYT still have a job?
Comment by SCSIwuzzy — 01.12.05 @ 12:55 pm
Dan and Mary were doing what Viacom wanted - going after Bush, The ends justify the means. Get Bush any way you can; *LIE* if you must. Dick was put on the “panel” because he feels the same way. “No political motive”; one more lie from Viacom’s operatives.
Rod Stanton
Cerritos
Comment by Rod Stanton — 01.12.05 @ 12:58 pm
I’m just finishing Bernie Goldberg’s book “Arrogance” and to watch CBS’ Memogate unfold, you would have thought Bernie is a prophet, but the basic argument is valid. The mainstream TV news media, for more than 40 years, has presented one-sided stories whose ideas are generated by the Old Gray Lady, the New York Times. Once the Jayson Blair scandal hit and now Memogate, the new “domino theory” went into effect. Bloggers are doing what any credible journalist should do: back up their stories with documented proof and FACT. While bloggers admit their bias, they still desire the TRUTH, not what they hope to believe. Fox News recently released a story on their website about Duelfer’s report on WMD’s being true as reported in the Washington Post. Read that story and find for me one line which insults the reader’s intelligence… you can’t. Simple, concise writing and reporting as it is taught and should be practiced.
Comment by mike b — 01.12.05 @ 1:20 pm
Mike b,
Good point. And the bloggers who aren’t after truth, but are more about an agenda, are easy enough to spot and are soon outed and then discounted.
Comment by SCSIwuzzy — 01.12.05 @ 2:17 pm
Perhaps…
Then I remember my own experience with blogging, and how it ended last March.
And I see that Nykol’s lost her job because of her blog. And I think maybe I’m just happy enough being a reader.
Comment by Sarah Schreffler — 01.12.05 @ 2:34 pm
‘And if they had cleaned house of their own accord, I’d agree with you actus.
That they only took action after bloggers shined sunlight into CBS’s newsroom puts the lie to that assertion.’
By ‘the system’ I mean CBS and its environment.
Comment by actus — 01.12.05 @ 3:49 pm
My contribution is that, while I haven’t read the report, I have read Cal Thomas, Tony Blankley, Dave Barry, LGF, Powerline and you. I offer the following memo which is fake [I composed it myself] but I suspect might be close to accurate:
To Dick Thornburgh, Lewis D. Boccardi
From Royal High Muckety-Mucks at CBS
Date: Illegible
Re Report on the CBS 60 Minutes Wednesday Fiasco on TANG and President Bush
Your assignment is follows:
1. Don’t even discuss why CBS poured time, money and energy into a 30-year-old story on possible irregularities in the National Guard record of a man who has just spent the past three and three-fourths years as the Commander-in-Chief the military forces of the United States.
2. Don’t even think about applying the same standards to CBS that our investigators apply to objects of our investigations.
3. Don’t include anything that might expose CBS to criminal or legal action.
4. Don’t include anything that would give individual blogs
a. validity
b. credibility
c. publicity
d. energy [don’t make them angry]
5. Show us the report first [six weeks lead time would be nice] before making it public so we can coordinate our damage control –which we know you can help us with–or recommend someone who can.
6. Most importantly, remember which side your bread is buttered on!
7. And, oh, yeah, of course, we want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, etc.
[Illegible signature(s)]
Just trying to show that the blogosphere can be creative at coming up with fake sources, too. Evon
Comment by Evon Bachaus — 01.12.05 @ 4:04 pm
For those of us still unborn in the 30s, 40s, 50s and part of the 60s, we finally have an invention or whatever it’s called, that we can call our own: the Internet, or more specifically, blogging. Join in new medium now while it’s still in its infancy.
ummmm. Lashawn does that mean, since I was born before the mid 60’s, that I’m not allowed to blog? Just asking.
P.
Comment by Pamela — 01.12.05 @ 4:19 pm
I was expecting a smilie face, Pamela. I can’t tell if your joking or not. What I meant was that something siginificant or revolutionary happened in the lifetimes of people my age, born in the late 60s, who weren’t around when radio or TV were first invented. That’s it.
I think I need a vacation.
Comment by LB — 01.12.05 @ 4:25 pm
You’re right, I should have added a smilie
I’m a baby boomer with a strong interest in blogs and blogging. I’m also a conservative Christian who doesn’t find a lot in common with many of my contemporaries. I really do appreciate your blog and try to check in every day. You get slammed enough, without your supporters inadvertantly being rude.
P.S. If I do start my own blog someday you will have been one of my inspirations.
P.
Comment by Pamela — 01.12.05 @ 5:06 pm
LaShawn,
I firmly believe we are witnessing the slow death of network news as provided by the Big Three. It will take time, but I believe they will give up news altogether and concentrate on entertainment. As far as I’m concerned they are already irrelevant.
Comment by marcus — 01.12.05 @ 5:42 pm
By ‘the system’ I mean CBS and its environment.
So did I
Comment by SCSIwuzzy — 01.12.05 @ 7:05 pm
Okay, I was in college in the sixties- I wonder where that puts me in all this!
In any case, I appreciate you bloggers and encourage your good work.
KEEP ON BLOGGING!
I think the so called “big three” are presenting the news much as they have for the past thirty years. They haven’t changed and if anything, they have become more arrogant and self serving. Consider how CBS has whitewashed and controlled the so called “investigation” of the Rather Memo. It is hard to believe Moonves actually thinks the public will buy it. They are withering on the vine and don’t it. Amazing!
Comment by Ron Vaughan — 01.12.05 @ 8:19 pm
I gave up on TV 15 years ago… let alone the the so called news that gets blatherd on and on…
I cant believe that this is going down so easily. To be sure if the shoe was on the other foot they would have demanded a Congressional investigation and lawsuits would be flying…
What’s worse I think garbage like this goes on all the time, this was just Sooooo way out there that it was easy to spot as trash and prove same.
As for blogging. I have been for 18 months and I would no more stop now than stop breathing. It is my voice in the marketplace of ideas and I love having it.
Keep up the great work La Shawn…Awesome!
Comment by Hokulea — 01.12.05 @ 10:12 pm
CBS news headline “Four Liberals Fired, Four Liberals Hired”.
Comment by ratso ferrari — 01.13.05 @ 1:23 pm
After reading parts of the report and more commentary, I’ve decided that my previous fake memo was inaccurate. CBS commissioning the report was more like a criminal in handcuffs in one of those TV shows saying, “I want my lawyer.” The Internet had the goods on CBS and they wanted legal protection. So the memo might have read like this:
Give us legal protection!
Find (a)scapegoat(s)!
Name ‘em!
So we can moveon.
Comment by Evon Bachaus — 01.14.05 @ 11:28 am
Journalistic Bias and Arrogance
With the Howard Fineman piece on the demise of the Mainstream Media (MSM), Rathergate, and other developments of late, we’re hearing a lot of talk about the bias of the mainstream media — even more than usual. What we all must remember here is that w…
Trackback by David Limbaugh — 01.14.05 @ 12:41 pm
I found your blog through the David Limbaugh site. and I think it is awesome that you are a woman, black, and conservative. To top it off you are not afraid to show it. Keep up the good work.
Comment by Annice — 01.15.05 @ 12:38 am