Have a read of this excellent article by Eric Alterman in The Nation about the corrective role played by the blogosphere. It’s not only largely self-correcting, but it also holds previously immune political commentators and pundits to account. As Alterman writes,
"Back in the pre-Internet days of yore, political punditry was the best job in journalism and one of the best anywhere. You could spout off on anything you wanted, and almost nobody would call you on it, much less find a place to publish and prove you wrong. And once you had established yourself as "credible," it required little work, save coming up with a few semi-memorable phrases...
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The advent of the Internet–particularly the blogosphere–has changed all that. Now, not only are the things pundits say and write preserved for posterity; there are legions of folks who track pundit pronouncements, fact-check their statements and compare them with previous utterances on the same and similar topics. They also demand a degree of transparency about methods of inquiry and the reasoning behind conclusions drawn."
This has, unsurprisingly, led to a decline in "pundit prestige", as more and more political commentators have been exposed as hypocritical, bluffing know-nothings (or worse). The reaction has been equally predictable - professional punditry is starting to "panic". Alterman puts it bluntly:
"most MSM pundits are lazy, ill informed and in thrall to the specious arguments of the powerful people they are supposed to critique."
The blogosphere is filled with intelligent, resourceful, independent writers who aren’t afraid to call bullshit and the mainstream press is, understandably, terrified of it. (This is not, however, to overestimate the impact of blogging - it has been fairly limited so far, but it surely has great potential).
Take, for example, NBC journalist Tim Russert, who complained that bloggers "force candidates to accept a position, to play [an adversarial] role". This in turn "puts pressure on those of us in the mainstream media [if we’re not] sufficiently adversarial." Outrageous, I know.
In the UK, the neo-conservative commentator (and, er, blogger) Oliver Kamm objected to the fact that blogging is "a democratic medium", thereby enabling "anyone to participate in political debate without an intermediary, at little or no cost." The problem, says Kamm, is that anyone is allowed to have a go - one "need[s] no competence to join in."
You can feel him quaking, can’t you? How dare these peasants feel able to talk sensibly about grown-up business?
One is reminded of Alexander Hamilton’s warning of the danger of allowing the "great beast" (the public) to have meaningful voice. Or Walter Lippman, the dean of respectable American journalism, who cautioned that "[t]he public must be put in its place...so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd."
Kamm then goes on to argue, ludicrously, that somehow blogging works to narrow debate as opposed to widening it. He would evidently much prefer it if the only views people were exposed to were those "respectable" and sanitised enough to be published in the mass media. That, for Kamm, is "democracy". Unlike the narrow spectrum of thought permissable in the mainstream press, an entire world of opinions and analyses is available through blogs (as well as alternative news sites). This wide range of accessible views means the average blog-reader is far better equipped intellectually to discriminate and evaluate between sources and develop an informed opinion than those whose political intake is limited to the corporate press.
Kamm is right to be scared - he has himself experienced the corrective nature of the blogosphere. Stuart of Indecent Left has exposed Kamm’s nonsense on several occassions - all, as far as I can tell, without any reply from the man himself (naturally, we musn’t expect Kamm to debase himself by engaging with the peasantry. He’s a professional pundit, for god’s sake!).
Not everyone is as outwardly elitist as Kamm. Recently, we’ve seen the animosity of professional punditry towards the blogosphere reveal itself through a strange focus on the bad langauge and occasional abuse found on blogs and in comments. Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland, for example, recognises the democratising potential of blogging, before noting the "downside" of this "freedom":
"But it won’t take you long to run into some serious vitriol. Even a brief, light piece can trigger a torrent of abuse, usually directed at the author and rapidly diverted by the commenters to each other."
Perhaps - though this is true in some places more than others. But so what? As in life, you just ignore the idiots. It’s not that complicated.
No, all this focus on "abuse" and foul-language is just another manifestation of the deep, hopefully justified fear coursing through mainstream journalism, and the establishment more generally, at the prospect of widespread democratic, citizen journalism and an informed, politicised public.
But if you’re a professional journalist or political commentator, cheer up! Alterman has a fairly straightforward solution to get bloggers off your back:
"Work harder, do a better job. It’s really that simple."
Or, even better, go independent and start up a blog yourself.
(For what looks to be an interesting book about the decline of professional journalism, see ‘End Times: The Death of the Fourth Estate‘ by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair).
Cross-posted at The Heathlander