On the mainstream media's enemies list

On the mainstream media's enemies list

In today's Orlando Sentinel, Kathleen Parker hangs a big ol' Kick Me sign on her back:

What is wonderful and miraculous about the Internet needs little elaboration. We all marvel at the ease with which we can access information -- whether reading government documents previously available only to a few, or tracking down old friends and new enemies.

It is this latter -- our new enemies -- that interests me most. I don't mean al-Qaida or Osama bin Laden, but the less visible, insidious enemies of decency, humanity and civility -- the angry offspring of narcissism's quickie marriage to instant gratification.

The enemies to which she refers? Bloggers.

Although I've been a blog fan since the beginning, and have written favorably about the value added to journalism and public knowledge thanks to the new "citizen journalist," I'm also wary of power untempered by restraint and accountability.

Say what you will about the so-called mainstream media, but no industry agonizes more about how to improve its product, police its own members, and better serve its communities. Newspapers are filled with carpal-tunneled wretches, overworked and underpaid, who suffer near-pathological allegiance to getting it right.

This is demonstrably false. Just ask Dan Ra^ther. Or Eason Jordan. Or Jayson Blair. Or Walter Pincus. Or as a counterexample, ask Michael Yon.

Fact-checking is one thing the blogosphere does very, very well. I couldn't get away with publishing a falsehood here. Even with my small readership, only 50 or so regular daily readers, I am certain that even the tiniest error I make here will be pounced upon, and a correction forced. Just watch how fast this gets corrected: E=mc³E=mc². (That didn't take long. Lone Pony came up with the correction four hours after I posted this. Two hours later I checked my email and saw the message from Lone Pony, then made this correction. Ever see a response that fast from a newspaper?)

If what I wrote was truly outlandish, I could expect to not only hear about it, but potentially be ridiculed in thousands of blogs - and worst of all, to be ignored thereafter. I get instant fact-checking too; if I write something stupid or crazy or just plain incorrect, I can expect a comment about it within a few hours at most. And I would have to correct my mistake; I've done so in the past, on several occasions. So has any other blogger worth his salt who has been at it for any length of time.

If a newspaper publishes something that is stupid, or crazy, or just plain incorrect, then they get letters to the editor - letters which the editor might or might not publish, letters which might not get acknowledged at all. The error might be corrected, in small print on page A12 a few weeks later. Or it might just simply be buried.

This is the major difference between publishing news on a blog as opposed to publishing it in the mainstream media: transparency. Bloggers have checks and balances in their readers and a multitude of other blogs. Newspapers checks and balances are completely opaque, where they exist at all.

Prior to the arrival of the blogosphere, a paper like the New York Times had gravitas, respectability, trustworthiness ... and I suspect that these qualities were due in large part to the opacity of the feedback system. Now that bloggers can publish easily, and now that there are millions of fact-checkers rather than the handful that any newspaper can afford, the New York Times has been exposed over and over again as being little more than a fancy version of the Weekly World News. Not that I am picking on the Times in particular; they are simply emblematic of the newspaper publishing industry as a whole. Newspapers around the globe have taken a hit to their trustworthiness, because now the transparency has been taken care of for them by an outside force, the blogosphere. And it shows, in consistently-declining readership across the newspaper industry.

Bloggers persist no matter their contributions or quality, though most would have little to occupy their time were the mainstream media to disappear tomorrow. Some bloggers do their own reporting, but most rely on mainstream reporters to do the heavy lifting. Some bloggers also offer superb commentary, but most babble, buzz and blurt like caffeinated adolescents competing for the Ritalin generation's inevitable senior superlative: Most Obsessive-Compulsive.

Even so, they hold the same megaphone as the adults and enjoy perceived credibility owing to membership in the larger world of blog grown-ups. These effete and often-clever "bloggies" are rich in time and toys, but bereft of adult supervision.

Here's where Parker goes off the rails. If I put out consistently poor-quality blogposts, I might persist - but my readership would drop to nil. You see, I do have adult supervision: my readers. They ultimately decide whether my blog is worth reading, or not. If not, then they will go elsewhere - they have fifty or sixty million other blogs they could be reading instead.

And while Parker is correct that bloggers rely on journalists to do most of the primary reporting, that isn't always going to be the case. Where was the primary reporting from the mainstream media on Iraq's elections? It was nonexistent. If you wanted to know what was going on in Iraq, you had to turn to the above-mentioned Michael Yon or else go to Pajamas Media: bloggers, all.

Each time I wander into blogdom, I'm reminded of the savage children stranded on an island in William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Without adult supervision, they organize themselves into rival tribes, learn to hunt and kill, and eventually become murderous barbarians in the absence of a civilizing structure.

What Golding demonstrated -- and what we're witnessing as the blogosphere's offspring multiply -- is that people tend to abuse power when it is unearned and will bring down others to enhance themselves. Likewise, many bloggers seek the destruction of others for their own self-aggrandizement. When a mainstream journalist stumbles, they pile on like so many savages, hoisting his or her head on a bloody stick as Golding's children did the fly-covered head of a butchered sow.

"without adult supervision"..."murderous barbarians"..."savages"... Thanks Kathleen, we love you too. I am tickled pink by the second-last paragraph in her essay:

I mean no disrespect to the many brilliant people out there -- professors, lawyers, doctors, philosophers, scientists and other journalists who also happen to blog. Again, they know who they are. But we should beware and resist the rest of the ego-gratifying rabble who contribute only snark, sass and destruction.

After an entire article in which she calls bloggers children, savages, murderous barbarians, and so on, it is a little rich to say "I mean no disrespect" in the second-to-last paragraph. As for her ego-gratifying rabble, well, if what they write is of good quality, then they will get readership; if not, then not. It's the free market, baby.

Perhaps that is what has Kathleen Parker so discombobulated: it really is a free market. Maybe she is afraid that newspapers will join buggy-whip makers: an industry demolished by the advance of technology and an unwillingness (or an inability) to adapt.

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