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September 16, 2004 Triumphalism Blog triumphalism is getting a bit out of hand, lately. I think it's time for a bit of perspective. Sure, the distributed intelligence of the blogosphere helped a great deal in aggregating relevant information, pushing the Forgery Story to the front burner, and pressuring CBS--and the media--to reach some resolution. For all of that, the 'sphere deserves credit. But this talk about "revolutionizing the media", "bringing down the Mainstream Media", and "making the MSM obselete" are just so much nonsense. As Josh Marshall writes, "most of what blogs do feeds off of newspaper coverage -- either criticizing coverage, expanding on coverage, running with stories that aren't getting much attention and so forth. That's not to say blogs aren't important, only that they're in a synergistic or interdependent relationship with the conventional media". I've been conflicted about the proper description of blogs. Blogs are:
David Adesnik writes that "American journalists' unflagging efforts to confront authority figures and challenge conventional wisdom created the environment within which bloggers can thrive" and that, as a result of this, "America's bloggers are very much its journalists' children". There's something to this, I think, but it doesn't quite hit the mark. Blogs, I think, are a combination of editor and stringer. Bloggers do both the fact-checking (of editors), and the preliminary--even dubious--muckraking (of stringers in search of a story). The Blogosphere might best be compared to the newsroom at a newspaper. There, you'll find everything....the conscientous fact-checking, as well as the unsourced rumors that never make the final product. Well, in the 'sphere, all of it is thrown against the wall to see what sticks. Blogs, like the preliminary research done in the newsrooms, are not The Record. They are merely the combined intelligence and information that goes into coalescing The Record. Except, in blogs--for better or worse--it's all written and published as it happens. In our current case--commonly called RatherGate--Matthew Yglesias makes a case against blogs that I think touches on, but ultimately misses, the point... I'm not quite sure I grasp all the blogosphere triumphalism surrounding the Killian memos. After CBS ran the story, the conservative side of the 'sphere came up with dozens of purported debunkings of their authenticity, almost all of which turned out to be more purported than debunking. Then after a few days of back-and-forth, traditional reporters at The Washington Post came out with a more careful, more accurate, more actually-debunking story. The folks at PowerLine and LGF are, at best, Gettier cases, they didn't do any of the actual debunking. Instead, it was done by reporters working for major papers. And good for them. And shame on CBS. But I don't really see what the blogs had to do with it. [emphasis added]Matt essentially notes the preliminary nature of the blogospheric contribution to this story. You can be certain the WaPo reporters didn't arrive at their story fully-formed and correct. Instead, they pieced together the various bits and pieces pointed out by others, be they experts or bloggers, discarded the dross and wrote up the accurate bits. Now, one might correctly say that the final WaPo product had a higher percentage of accuracy than the whole of the blogospheric contribution, but if Matt really can't see that the blogosphere contributed to that final product.... Well, I doubt he's that foolish. In fact, the blogosphere's contribution was exactly the sort of distributed-intelligence expertise, aggregation and vetting that produces--and, in fact, produced--a story like that which eventually ran in the Washington Post. Blogs were editors to CBS, and stringers for the Washington Post. Tony Blankley described this distributed intelligence contribution in more vivid terms:
Jesse Taylor is correct to critically ask "Have we now reached the point ... where a significant portion of the conservative blogosphere actually believes that it provides a thoroughly reliable fact-check function?" But Tony Blankely is also correct to describe the process thusly: "As each of these experts added their information to one blog, other bloggers would monitor it, pass it on, add a new fact, reorganize the analysis and synthesize new information. If new information proved wrong, it was corrected by yet another expert in the blogosphere." Blogs, in the end, are not the Journalism Product of Record. But they are a part of the process....as both stringers and, at times, editors-of-last-resort. And, really, that's a pretty valuable contribution.
The real revolution is not the blogosphere, per se. It is competition in the media news marketplace, first brought by talk radio, and then cable news. The failing of broadcast news-- CBS, NBC and ABC-- is they did not recognize competition from cable news until it was too late. CNN, once the cable alternative to MSM, is now MSM itself. They too failed to recognize competition, and now FoxNews has twice the audience of CNN on any given night.He has a point, I think. What passes for news media is becoming less centralized, and more ideological...as well as more ideologically diverse. I do wonder what effect that will have on the consumers, who are becoming more comfortable picking their media outlet based on what news they like to hear. (see: FOXNews) I fear that may lead to even more polarization, in due time, as the citizenry immerses themselves in almost wholly different universes of facts and values. What facts, after all, will Rush Limbaugh news-consumers share in common with Al Franken news-consumers? Very little, I fear. And that will make a civil, reasonable exchange of ideas very nearly impossible. UPDATE III: Bit late to update this post, but Bill from INDC Journal has made a very important contribution to the "settle down, Beavis" theme.... |
"There is no truth, only power."
-Leftist Blogs
Posted by: Leftist Blogs at September 16, 2004 08:49 AM
I regard bloggers as a check and balance on the MSM... a newly installed one. I think we agree, particularly with what we've seen in this story, they need it.
Posted by: Bithead at September 16, 2004 09:08 AM
Blogs aren't journalism, and that good as well as bad.
It's good in that bloggers aren't tied to corporate lines, bureaucratic conventions, and have the time to focus on their own areas of specialization coupled with their particular--and wide ranging--interests.
It's bad because they don't have quite the deep pockets to engage in lengthy research into areas outside their expertise when they may need to know something not already in their information kits.
Something that catches my attention particularly is that bloggers are not as well prepared to handle foreign stories as adeptly as a well-staffed news bureau.
Clearly, as the blogging from Iraq shows, this isn't necessarily fatal, but the military bloggers are there in large numbers. Are there anywhere near that number blogging from Sudan? Or Syria?
Iraqi bloggers certainly bring something new to the table. But how do you read them? Never mind that many are blogging in Arabic--little read in the US--how do we put into context what Iraqis with little contact with the US (or the West in general) are saying?
I suspect that if blogging is to become the "new medium" (and I strongly argue that it is just that), it will still have to mediate information.
This is definitely not a bad thing, but it brings the potential for uncorrected and perhaps uncorrectable error to the table.
Blogging is good. Blogging isn't the last word in communications, though.
Posted by: John at September 16, 2004 09:10 AM
Matt and Jesse's argument is a sour grapes one.
Both of these (including Atrios, Willis, Kos and Kevin Drum), wanted these to be true and argued quite strenously that if even if they were forgeries, the facts were correct. That turned out to be the same argument that CBS later chose.
Jesse should turn his argument around, "Does the left side of the blogosphere feel that they are providing a thoroughly reliable fact checking function", and see how he feels and would answer.
Bill at INDC actually got one of the foremost document experts to render a verdict ont eh docs. That moment was a tunring point form "are they" to "they are".
Look at the effect and role of Iranian bloggers. Iranian bloggers operate as the reliable fact checking organ in place of a thoroughly corrupt media.
Posted by: capt joe at September 16, 2004 09:22 AM
The problem with Blogging triumph is it assumes the rest of the world is aware of it to enough of an extent that they sit down at the end of the day and 'work' to get their news(as it takes a fair amount of distillation jumping from Blog to Blog to get a whole story image with reasonable accuracy) or sit down at the end of the day to get their information in predigested form.
I love my fellow man, and wish they would slow down a bit and pay attention and THINK, but sorry, most of them will prefer the TIVO version of the universe and newwise the MSM's are that.
CBS knows that, and they are relying on it.
Over the last week or so the Blogs have become kind of a feedback loop, hence the increased outrage felt by bloggers, and the seeming lack of interest by the general MSM viewing public to what is clearly a fraud being foisted off on them.
Posted by: looker at September 16, 2004 09:37 AM
Well done, Jon. Your post is an example of what I like to think is the intellectual honesty underlying the best blogs, which, speaking purely from personal experience, seem to be concentrated on the political right. In contrast, how much genuine self-examination have we seen from The Usual Media Susprects? ....A couple of points...
I agree that, ordinarily, bloggers do not actually "discover" facts in the sense of reporting stories for the first time (but this is not a hard and fast rule: how often in the past week have we seen bloggers who tracked down and interviewed various experts and authorities, even conducted apparently dispositive experiments). Bloggers provide two other, vital services.
First, the 'sphere researches, collates, sifts and tracks down at a collective speed MSM can't hope to match. It's still very early, there are no "industry standards," but blog consumers learn who is reliable and worthy of trust; sort of like figuring out which blogs to follow in the first place.
Second, and to the lasting shame of "legacy media," the 'sphere is now Chief Editor to journalism at large, because the job has been vacant. RatherMania '04 wouldn't have been born if CBS had a single honest editor/producer in authority. The blogosphere is thus a vital, and now permanent, part of news reporting and commentary.
And about Josh Marshall, Matt Yglesias, et al., pooh-poohing the "Age Of The Blog": does it not strike you as odd to the point of perversity that two of the leading left-leaning bloggers are now trying to undermine blogs' credibility and potential power? Could it be that Josh and Matt see the Left as having lost out in the blogosphere's marketpklace of ideas? That they see new power devolving primarily to that right-leaning part of the 'sphere? That they thus desperately need to derail it, even at the cost of their own influence? Are we seeing them take one for the team?
Posted by: Jumbo at September 16, 2004 09:49 AM
For my part, I think Marshall was right on, and Yglesias made some good points, but underplayed the role of blogs.
Or, more specifically, Yglesias missed the point that the creation of the final product to which he points was, in quite large part, a result of the blogosphere. It wasn't published on blogs, but it cannot really be separated from them. I don't think he gave blogs enough credit for the underlying work.
I don't think they're trying to "undermine blogs power". I think they're trying to not overstate their significance.
Posted by: Jon Henke at September 16, 2004 10:03 AM
Blogs and the MSM need each other. That is not currently obvious to many on either side of the equation. Blogs don't have the capacity to be the developers of news product, but they have an enormous opportunity to influence the integrity of the end result. MSM need not disparage nor fear blogs, but they must acknowledge their strengths. In the future, the strongest MSM will get better because of integrating, not dscounting blogs. Blogs are not going to replace the national media. Both sides will improve, the right and the left. What's not to like?
Posted by: EddieP at September 16, 2004 11:44 AM
The point is not that the bloggers definitively proved the docs to be forged. It's that they spotted the forgery and indeed broke the story. Think what you would have to believe to imagine the docs to be authentic. Not that there was or was not TNR fonts available in 1972, but that they were available on a conventional typewriter and not a typesetter. Etc, etc...
And it's not that CBS will somehow be brought down by the bloggers. That won't happen, because we need them too much. But, MSM will never be the same.
Yglesias' Gettier hypothesis is silly. I could produce a document on MS Word, with TNR font, etc, that is then photocopied and sent to CBS News. I could tell them the original was actually printed by Ben Franklin over 200 years ago and there is no way anyone could definitively prove me wrong. It was always possible to hand carve a wooden printing plate to look just like the MS Word doc.
Posted by: Roger Snowden at September 16, 2004 11:47 AM
I can't disagree with the sentiments and reasoned logic that I have seen here, but I do think that there is one point that has escaped in the present discussion. Specifically, I think it is necessary that Rather and his editor both go, because if they survive this exercise the lesson will be lost that truth is an important commodity in the news business.
If they go, it will drive home the idea that the MSM can no longer shade the news to fit their preferences, at least to the point of lying.
If they stay, a large part of the impact of what concientious bloggers have done will be lost. The MSM won't feel that they have someone looking over their shoulder, and will fall back into their old ways.
That's why I feel that it's critical to keep the pressure on at this point and not let this story die a natural death. The good side of the whole affair is that, with the ongoing publicity, many people who never knew there was such a thing as a blog will begin to check out the validity of MSM stories on the web. Let's hope so anyhow!
Posted by: John F. at September 16, 2004 07:24 PM
Unfortunately, the shutting down of the dialogue in this country has been going on for some time now. That's because dialogue presupposes two reasonable sides exchanging ideas -- and the left side is no longer able to maintain that charade. That's because the Left has been co-opting liberalism since the 1890's, and this process was completed in the 1960's. The last reasonable liberals are all old, and dying off. MoveOn.org and the thugs who ripped up a three year old's Bush-Cheney banner, are all that's left over there.
Posted by: bdeep at September 16, 2004 11:23 PM
I think everyone misses the point of Blogs entirely.
The blogsphere is a giant B.S. filter of what is fed to us from the MSM. Instead of one reporter getting some information, then disseminating it to us through his biased mind, and then feeding it to us as he sees it, we have Blogs which consist of millions (?) of people that have more combined knowledge on the subjects the reporter is giving us and thoroughly disecting it to find out what the -REAL- truth is.
If a reporter pulls a rathergate, they will be discovered and vetted quickly and harshly. I would say that from now on, reporters will be very very careful as to how much spin they attempt to put in their news.
The Blogshpere, the worlds B.S. filter.
Posted by: Navteqie at September 17, 2004 07:48 AM
B.S. filter? B.S. filter? The blogosphere spread, far and wide, the B.S.:
- that no typewriters in 1972 could do proportionally-spaced type (some could and did);
- that no typewriters in 1972 could do superscripted ordinal suffixes like "th" (some could and did);
- that "P.O. Box 34567" was a bogus address for the 111th F.I.S. (it was the legitimate address);
They haven't been "filtered", but rather repeated endlessly despite being B.S.
That looks more like a credulous "echo chamber", "rumor mill", or "grapevine" suitable for relaying hoaxes, urban legends, and propaganda.
Oh, but that isn't properly self-congratulatory, is it?
Sorry, I meant to say the blogosphere should be proud, proud, of passing along only the Truth on which all Right-Minded people can agree.
Posted by: Raven at September 19, 2004 03:21 AM
" * that no typewriters in 1972 could do proportionally-spaced type (some could and did);
* that no typewriters in 1972 could do superscripted ordinal suffixes like "th" (some could and did);
* that "P.O. Box 34567" was a bogus address for the 111th F.I.S. (it was the legitimate address);"
heh. EVERY blog I followed on this question made it clear that here was a word processor and a linotyper that could have done such nowadays-common functions in 1972. They also made clear the machines were prohibitively expensive for a NG outfit, and, even if available, required the operator to stop his rask and change the "character ball". You must have overlooked these minor details. Not at all bad for a man who, accordingly to his family and his secreatry, never typed.
Raven, you've lost this issue; and the election as well. You'll have to suffer 4 more years of Bush. We'll both be happier if you spend your time at those blogs which expose how Bush and the Jews destroyed the Towers.
Posted by: Jumbo at September 19, 2004 05:26 PM
They also made clear the machines were prohibitively expensive for a NG outfit, and, even if available, required the operator to stop his rask and change the "character ball".
But the IBM Executive (a) wasn't prohibitively expensive for any military "outfit" (particularly with the discounts IBM gave military procurement offices), and (b) didn't require changing the "character ball" (since it didn't use a typeball). These memos didn't change fonts. The small "th" wasn't two-letters-in-a-smaller-font, it was a single-keystroke ligature — like the "1/2", "1/4", and "3/4" keys.
Posted by: Raven at September 20, 2004 12:50 AM