I was reading a diary today about a Kossack, Greenomatic, who was complaining about the "elitist disdain" that "real journalists" show for the blogosphere and sites like the DK. MSM Goes Down in Flames, Wonders What Happens.
I know, many of us can barely string sentences together, or spell, we have the punctuation of random stoned monkeys with dain bramage, and we like to curse a lot [OH TEH Horror!].
Yes, to read the MSM side of the story, *regular people on the intertoobz are just one step up from shit-flinging primates.
And you know what? Sometimes they are right.
But ...
What they are not saying is this:
Even the dumbest, least edu-ma-cated jackhole out there, is sick of tabloid drivel that passes for "News".
And that is very bad [for the press and their corporate puppet masters].
So the blogosphere in all it's volatile wonder was the obvious result.
You--The Press-- won't make actual, genuine news for the peons, so we make it ourselves.
So what makes our news better?
We have a bit of time and not a care in the world when it comes to businesses pulling their ads if we step on their delicate corporate or political toes.
Many of us have been gathering multiple accounts for different topics so that we can give ourselves and our friends [or readers] a more broad view of said topic.
We don't have political or corporate operatives as desk editors cutting the most interesting material out of our stories and dumbing them down.
We are allowed to get angry, and remain that way. We can be a fan, or a rival, or a critic, or a voice of reason.
We-peasants, on the interwebz have the ability to take back much of our power online, that is deprived of us, in real-time by politicians and corporate leaders who do nothing for us but mouth empty platitudes in our general direction while robbing us blind of our money and our civil rights.
Without the internet, without the blogosphere, we would be disenfanchised from the political process as we know it.
20 years ago, some of us started researching and organizing effective movements online, and the powers that be have been searching for a way to appropriate that, or stop it ever since.
Why do you think they have all these fake anti-piracy bills out? It isn't to protect anything. It's to shut us up, and shut us down.
Why do you think some larger companies are trying to get access to our private social media pages and passwords? It isn't for security reasons, it's to weed out free thinkers and big doers. Those people want to lop off any protruding personalities from their potential workforce to set an example.
*THIS could happen to you, if you stick your neck out for a cause we don't like or if you blow a whistle or help others who do those things.
The blogosphere is a direct counter to Sound-Bite-Culture.
You ask how these entities succeed in dumbing the country down? Sound-Bite Culture is a big part of it.
If you cannot make a discussion into a one liner, then it isn't shared. Investigative journalism in the professional world is an endangered species. But our desire for more information, has driven many of us, to fill in those gaps ourselves. And that is a very threatening proposition to the intellectually, lazy, wing of the press, and their handlers.
And not being a whole nation of English Majors, or Journalists, or Professional Writers--there will be misspellings, and bad grammar, and poor sentence structure, and worse.
But for each person you see attempting to communicate in the vastness of inner-space--that represents one person who gives a shit. One person who cares enough, to take time out of their busy day to get to the bottom of a story, to find out more, because the material they have been provided, the coverage that wasn't there was so disturbing or so disappointing, that they decided to take matters into their own hands. Or better yet, they just smelled bullshit.
If a person can be inspired to write their thoughts online, is it really that much of a stretch to see that they can be inspired to vote? To write a letter to their elected representative? To give money to a party or a PAC? To take some other kind of concrete action?
How many of us, have taken local action, protested something local in our home towns, something big--only to be ignored by the local news?
[raising my hand].
That happens to a lot of people. That has been happening to a lot of people over the years. And it has accumulated into a mass of frustration that has found a ready release online.
All those Peace Protests, all those Act Up Protests, all those OWS marches--all those stories like that involve millions of people who have had their eyes opened to the incestuous relationship between corporations, politicians, and the so-called Fourth Estate.
When the press fails to cover the People's Causes and instead promotes, exclusively the party line of this or that political party or corporation; how do they think that will be perceived by the citizens in that moment?
Why hasn't the press figured out that these acts are basically censorship?
Greenomatic is right. The MSM is going down in flames and appears to be completely clueless.
The same press that will obsessively cover the WBC over OWs Marches. The same press that will obsess over Lindsey Lohan instead of covering attempts to disenfranchise minority or poor or foreclosure victims, the same press that will write the most disgusting, shallow fluff instead of helping us interact in a more informed manner with our own government.
We have been swimming, snorkel free, in a new age of Yellow Journalism.
That makes the press' disdain for the citizens online, who are doing their [the press'] job, an act of sublime arrogance.
What did they think would happen eventually?
And given that, we now know that our government and large corporations have hired individuals to troll on their behalf on comment forums [see electronic astroturfing] and even create their own blogs; how much of the ridiculousness that we see in the comment threads is actually generated by genuine readers, as opposed to government or corporate concern trolls?
And the MSM press ignores this. If you do not scour local news online in all 50 states, or find a blogger, or an alt news site that does this, you might never read of these matters.
We are up against the overt opponents, and their undercover-hired-guns online. And sadly, these corporate and political trolls often drive the discussion in a desired direction too.
So I repeat:
That makes the press' disdain for the citizens online, who are doing their [the press'] job, an act of sublime arrogance.