Readers know by now that I’m a blogger’s blogger, a staunch advocate of the new medium (and marketing tool). We’ve witnessed the power of a blog swarm and the reluctance of leftist media to report objectively about scandals involving Democrats.
It was the blogosphere that forced Sen. Richard Durbin to apologize for comparing American interrogators to Nazis and Soviets, not Democrats or the media.
It’s now common knowledge that mainstream media tend to downplay Democrats’ shenanigans and overplay whatever bone-headed thing Republicans may say or do. Sometimes the bias is blatant, other times subtle. You might not be able to pinpoint it exactly, but as Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote about obscenity in a landmark case: “[I] know it when I see it.”
The publisher of a small newspaper called the Carolina Journal wrote an editorial that gets to the heart of the issue. Regular people (distinct from journalists) were appalled by Dick Durbin’s remarks:
No major television network news show reported his initial remarks. No national newspaper saw them as newsworthy. So, where did this outrage come from, given that the media ignored his remarks? How did millions of Americans come to know Durbin as “Turban Durbin†if the mainstream media looked the other way? You’re looking at it right now: the Internet. [Read: blogosphere]Durbin was quaking and begging in the Senate Tuesday because of the tsunami of outrage from everyday people. Many of those, presumably, were his constituents. No senator does what he did yesterday without great pressure. He must have seen his political career teetering on the abyss. He was in danger of being remembered as the Democrat who thought American servicemen and women were monsters equal to Hitler’s SS or Stalin’s NKVD. He may still be so remembered, for even with the tears and the choking sobs he never actually took back what he said.
The Durbin affair is yet another example of how the times they are a-changin’ for the mainstream media. Dan Rather and the Swift Vets are others that come to mind. The MSM are no longer gatekeepers or agenda setters. Their attempts to blackout a story that doesn’t fit their template or rise to their level of interest no longer work. Increasingly, the American public is learning that it can go around the ossified hulk of the MSM to get to lively, often better informed, news and commentary. (Emphasis added)
Good op-ed. The only complaint I have is that most journalists, liberal or conservative, aren’t specific enough when they write about the influence of the “Internet.” It’s blogs specifically, not static web sites, that generate buzz.
Note: Message to readers with low IQs trying to comment on this post – Being a “blogger’s blogger” doesn’t mean I support whatever they do, like libel, cyber-stalking, lying, and filth, and that doesn’t make me a hypocrite. That I have to explain this makes me more sad than angry.
The govenment school system has done a tragically poor job educating citizens. Pitiful.
Update: More on slander and the Durbin Effect.
