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August 30, 2009

Albrighty Then, Time for Progress

 

 

I had to laugh when I saw this at NewsBusters: “Albright: Washington Times Makes Her 'Crazy'…”, considering what State Department insiders even on the left have told me and others about working under her for years - the woman was crazy long before she learned how to read. With that said, the other half of the headline read, “…but Insists Press Must Play an Adversarial Role with Government in Democracy”. The former Secretary of State under Bill Clinton (not literally) apparently made some statements recently, the crux of which were, as the headline suggests, that an adversarial role of the press is vital to a free society. This acknowledgement of truth is actually pretty profound these days for such a notable liberal, given the apparent general belief that the press now exists to evangelize the stubbornly recalcitrant masses who have not yet found the Obama religion.

 

However, Albright then manages to blindly stagger past not one, but two painfully gargantuan gorillas in the room: the first gorilla, that obsequence of most of the traditional press toward the current regime that functions within 15 miles end-to-end inside the Washington Beltway. The other gorilla that sees her even if she can’t – or won’t – see it is the eternal march of technology toward faster, better, and more efficient means of task completion. The hardcopy newspaper, charming though it may be in some ways, is increasingly becoming more backwater than mainstream. Democracy has spoken and it has selected the best, most reliable primary source of the information it needs to survive. That source is not the increasingly embittered, ideologically obtuse traditional news outlet, whose methods and worldview are tragically so 19th Century.

 

Albright seems, rather predictably for ideological reasons in her case, to follow the meme that the blogosphere cannot be trusted in the way hard-copy print material can. Is that so? Unless she is referring to blogs that exclusively link to the New York times or Washington Post to back up their facts, I cannot see how a good blog is any more given to rumor-mongering or spin than so much of the mainstream printed press is, to say nothing of the printed tabloid (often the same thing).

 

The blogosphere did not topple Dan Rather’s career with rumor. In that historic instance, it did not even need to link to sources outside itself to substantiate its claims: it used its own irrefutable evidence backed up by independent experts that together made for a sufficiently solid case to force a shakeup at CBS News. That shakeup, as everybody now knows, along with countless cases of plagiarism and Photoshopping among those working for major newspapers and newswires brought to our attention by the blogosphere, forced the ouster of so-called reporters and others in a cataclysm reminiscent of the Televangelist scandals of the late 1980s, and will alone leave an indelible mark on public perceptions of traditional news media for years to come.

 

Bloggers, time and again, show they do their homework to bring to light facts not only relevant to a given issue, but facts that are absolute game-changers. They do not merely make claims, or as mainstream media often does, make up sources or blindly ape other mainstream media, but support their claims with information generally readily verified by the reader.

 

There are some very important reasons for this. To start with, bloggers generally do not have giant legal departments backing them up. If they make a claim that is irresponsible, especially if it is defamatory of a non-public figure, they could face painful legal retribution. In fact, bloggers from time to time face retribution of all sorts even when the law is on their side. In the past, they have been harassed for the lawful fair-use of content reposted in blogs in the interest of demonstrating an idea, providing evidence to support a story or claim or in the creation of parody. Further, bloggers who also maintain a day job risk retribution from employers as well as from friends and family who may disagree with content and use their connections to those bloggers as a means to intimidate. More frighteningly however, is that bloggers, who also lack the ivory towers and other security apparati most members of the traditional press enjoy, also must endure the danger of stalkers and retribution from  the State in places like Iran or an from unstable and discontented reader elsewhere. As a result, most issues-bloggers are quite serious about getting their facts straight if they intend to post anything at all. That isn’t to say there aren’t flame throwers out there of every political persuasion or purely opinion posts, which have always been part of the news and information scene, lest no one’s heard of Paul Krugman.

 

There are many kinds of blogs just as there are many kinds of print publications and many kinds of television and radio programs. Certainly, a good measure of what’s out there in any of those mediums is of questionable worth, but the majority of readers and viewers are generally drawn to the sources of most genuine value. If we were to use some not-so-bright Albright logic, we might conclude that all newspapers are untrustworthy because most or some do shoddy, biased journalism, simply parrot the newswire without fact-checking, and lately, blindly accept as fact anything uttered by the current administration. The reality is that issues blogs, including the Drudge Report, are where the vast majority of online readers go to get their information, not blogs run by 17 year old celeb gossipers (likely one day to get a column in a “respectable” print publication to sport their worthless wares).

 

Indeed, part of the reason print media is suffering is because they, along with mainstream television media, have a credibility problem. This problem was dramatically validated as something much more than a mere long-standing gut feeling among information consumers who felt they were being cheated of the full story when Rathergate exploded. It is no coincidence, then, that the medium which exposed that and other important stories, the blogosphere, continues to earn its trust and build its credibility today.  The power of online information is in the power it gives to its consumer to instantly verify information passed along as by its purveyors as well as its ability to remain fresh and relevant. But chiefly is its more rigorous regime of accountability. Mainstream print media is simply not hard-wired to offer public accountability to that degree, especially not in the age of the 24 hour news cycle where getting it right needs to happen very quickly.

 

If one finds a factual inaccuracy on the printed page, he or she must likely partake in time-consuming research and then either choose to pick up the phone and cancel his or her subscription or write a letter to the editor, which may or may not get published and most likely will be edited beyond recognition before it does. And if it sparks a correction on the part of the paper, that correction will be buried deep in the back most likely days or weeks after the fact – thus the truth becomes useless information. Issues-blogs are incredibly dynamic, updating information and correcting inaccuracies often almost instantly. Those that do not risk losing readers who go elsewhere, but usually not before those readers kindly post one or two comments laden with the facts that subsequently reflect rather poorly on the blog in question. Serious bloggers (as opposed to Huffington Post, Daily Kos or Obama’s White House blog) understand this and are in this manner kept far more accountable than is often the case with print media. However, even the crazies serve a purpose, as they provide a free society with demonstrations of the outrageous so that we may know how to avoid it. Once again democracy wins out.

 

Furthermore, the blogosphere together with a host of other online resources provide a quick method by which the reader can gain a fuller scope of an issue in a shorter period of time – something that is important for most who work and have families. Also, it makes the reader an active participant in the information rather than simply a passive, filter-free receptor. Instead of sitting wide-eyed in front of a television or reading a single newspaper in the morning, the average citizen now has access to a full range of information about current events or a given issue from around the world in a matter of seconds. While Secretary Albright and others in similar professions find little difficulty in reading through four or five hardcopy newspapers every morning, most Americans’ schedules cannot enjoy such a luxury. Thus, the internet is yet another bright example of how democracy improves all things and how once again, information is the great equalizer of power.

 

Are there shortcomings with the online medium? Of course. Contrary to what utopian statists like to tell you, there is no such thing as a perfect solution for anything. However, the medium is what it is: the next natural progression of information dissemination that vastly improves over its ancient predecessor and will continue to develop and change as needed in the future. That said, there remain potholes in the information superhighway, but one of the biggest is caused by the same thing that has led some to being uninformed in the past: apathy. Those who choose not to take advantage of the great wealth of information out there so readily and freely available now but prefer to be spoon-fed by often slanted news sites such as AOL's or simply replace their hardcopy of the New York times for the online version as their only read, make the choice to live in ignorance. Indeed, the sheep will always be among us. But for those who understand their responsibility as citizens to stay truly informed, their day of liberation and greater political power has come.

 

As Secretary Albright points out, democracy needs independent sources of information in order to thrive. Where such information is limited, one generally sees less democratic regimes. What the secretary fails to apparently see is that for the most part the power of democracy here – the people – has realized that traditional sources of information have become inefficient, but more importantly, unreliable. As a result, they have moved on to sources that have proven their credibility, even doing so at times by boldly but credibly exposing the lack thereof among former mainstream information outlets. In short, Albright’s hopes that online information will soon give way to resurgence of print media are beyond unrealistic; they are counterproductive. As former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino touched on last night during her address at an event I attended at the Royal Automobile Club in London, the brutal truth is that online media is here to stay and is already becoming the new mainstream. It has proven its value both as a faster medium for the dissemination of information content as well as a medium in which the content itself has proven more credible than the dinosaurs it supplants. This is the one-two punch of obsolescence the horse and buggy once faced, and while today there are still horses and buggies, they have become an oddity for sentimental use rather than the primary means of transportation.  

 

For those who, politics aside, still enjoy holding a hard copy in their hands as they do their morning reading I do have one suggestion: buy a printer.  

 

 

Posted by Martin at August 30, 2009 10:09 AM

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