Reply #11: Nice rant [View All]

[Morgana LaFey]

and there's something else I've been mulling over real recently about the New Media:

It's democratic. Egalitarian. Everyone can play. Anyone can play.* If you don't have your own blog, you can comment on someone else's. YOUR comments, insights, and analysis gets as much real estate as any one else's, and are printed on a first-come, first-served basis. YOUR comments are worth as much as they are worth, no more and no less. If they're honest, accurate, reflect reality, and cogent, that'll get sorted out in the process. People eventually get it, in their hearts, when they're being lied to or conned. They (speaking collectively) get it in cybespace just as surely as they eventually got it about Bush and the GOP and turned them OUT this year. The internet facilitates all this, big time. EVERYONE potentially has a voice on the internet. It's Town Hall writ large.

"Real" journalists (cough, sputter), like to complain that there's no fact checking or other restraints on what gets published on the internet, as if their criticism really means that an unsuspecting audience should exercise extreme caution and for the most part just ignore the internet. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It is the corporate media who no longer fact checks. It is the corporate media who treat pure rumors as news -- who can take the Swift Boating charges and broadcast them, as Ted Koppel did, under the excuse that the fact that someone making these (totally unfounded) charges is NEWS. No, Ted, it's GOSSIP. Pity you no longer could recognize the difference.

* Everyone and anyone can play as long as they have a computer or access to a computer. We should concern ourselves with making sure many, many more people do. The more internet access (esp. for politically interested citizens), the more democracy. Pretty good deal, if you ask me, but also the reason TPTB want to find ways to tamp it down. We must not let them, no matter what.