In Defense of Bloggers: "Pay No Attention To That Man In the Pajamas"

George Neumayr:

Jonathan Klein, a former CBS executive, defends the "60 Minutes II" debacle at CBS by asking Americans if they trust anti-Rather bloggers -- a "guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing" -- over a veteran newsman and an established news organization. The American people, with good reason, are choosing the guy in his pajamas. Klein's remark encapsulates the mindless credentialism, sham authority, and elitist insularity that has made CBS so repellent to ordinary Americans. The American people can see that their aging media emperors have less clothing on than pajama-clad bloggers. The tidy world of credentialed news gave us the Jayson Blairs and Janet Cookes, the bogus documents of Seymour Hersh, the phony Dateline car blow-ups, and now 1970s documents produced on 1990s computers. For news executives sitting on a whitened sepulcher, disparaging appearances is the only insult left.

In an election year where both the print media and TV anchors selectively report the news (when they're not slanting it outrageously to suit their political agenda), it's no wonder that so many voters have lost faith in the objectivity of professional journalists. As Brent Bozell commented:

"Fifteen years ago you had about 20 percent of the American people that believed the media were biased. Today that number is 89 percent."

The lifeboat is full of holes, but instead of addressing the problem the media resort to insulting their competition: a grassroots network of independent amateurs determined to get at facts the media refuses to cover. As stories like the initial blackout of Bill Cosby's remarks, the AP "Bush crowd boos" debacle, and CBS's Memogate demonstrate, bloggers are, in some cases, actually driving the news cycle.

Healthy organizations, like individuals, survive by adapting to their environment. A smart general would recognize that a revolution is taking place in journalism. He would enlist these volunteers, study their tactics, and harness the power of the Internet to assist the media in their investigations. Instead, dinosaurs like Joe Klein circle the wagons and, like the Magnificent Oz, exhort us to "Pay no attention to that man in the pajamas".

In a world where 89% of viewers believe the media is biased, saying "bloggers aren't objective" is hardly a persuasive argument. Unlike the media, we don't pretend to be - most weblogs are clearly labeled "conservative, libertarian, or liberal". Having disclosed our agenda, we leave it to the reader to evaluate what we report. As FoxNews says, "We report -- you decide". And unlike the narrow funnel constructed by the AP, Reuters, and UPI which exerts a monopolistic effect on the news, bloggers range far and wide for their stories, fueled by a vast and politically diverse underground reporting staff: their readers.

The media fear webloggers because they can't control them. The "one source" wire service dispatches, picked up essentially verbatim by thousands of newsrooms worldwide, were an effective means of controlling the news. But the events of the past 24 months have shown that wire services are not always accurate and have a poor record of issuing retractions when they get it wrong.

Even worse, big media are stunningly oblivious to their own bias and hypocrisy. Arthur Sulzberger, editor of the NY Times, recently reflected:

Sulzberger said as some news organizations enjoy being "another actor in the political theater of the absurd," people either become disengaged or they vent their frustrations themselves.

..."We're human, and human enterprises often make mistakes. I can't think of any that haven't. The question is how quickly do you own up to it and how quickly do you acknowledge it to your readers and then move on past it?"

Observers of the Times' perennial bias in reporting and one-sided coverage of the election must be stunned to find the Sulzberger apparently agrees the media has a credibility problem. The question remains, if they see the problem, why do they stubbornly resist scrutiny and the change that comes from it?

In a democracy, people find a way to get around artificial barriers to ensure the free flow of goods and services. Information is no different - where demand exists, free and enterprising people will find a way to supply the goods. Blogging is the wave of the future. Moreover, it is democracy in action: the little guy finding a way to be heard even among the giants of the news industry. As ardent defenders of the First Amendment, the media should embrace this populist movement and help make it better, not sneer and deride the efforts of Americans who want the same thing the media purports to seek: the truth.

Thanks to spd rdr for the Sulzberger piece.

- Cassandra