MSM vs the NEW MEDIA

Thinking about blogs, about citizen journalism, about fringe thought, about authority, about people who are sanctioned through the academic/economic system.
   Someone complained to me about citizen journalists and the unreliability of blogs. I agree with this to an extent, but I am also excited about the possibility for real democratic expression and education via blogging. This possibility does not exist in the MSM.
   The standard complaint of establishment journalists and editors that there is no “vetting” process for blogs. Then I thought of what the New Yorker’s doing with blogs. They now have their regular contributors blogging… and they’re boring! The New Yorker itself has become boring to me since I’ve started reading blogs. Could be that something has to be really uniquely oriented towards my interests now for me to invest time in it.
    Blogs tend to be more nuanced than what I read in magazines, commercial websites and newspapers. And bloggers of news do not pretend an air of objectivity; these are people who care and dare.
   The New Yorker has positioned itself as the epicenter of “reasonable” commentary in recent years. The recent cover cartoon satirizing the characterization of Obama has got them on my mind. Smith opines that the cartoon was in bad taste, but I am ambivalent. If they say it is satire, so be it. I have other gripes about the New Yorker. It aspires to soar above mediocrity and dive down into the nitty gritty, but in reality its commentaries are snobbish edicts from on high. My interest degraded ever since the magazine started marketing itself in movies. I loved Adaptation, but I don’t like the elitism they’re pushing. ‘Course, I have a grudge against them; they fail to send courtesy emails after I submit poetry. It’s like sending poems to a giant Wall.
   The latest thing that has me going is the tone of Hendrik Hertzberg’s article about Obama’s measures for political expediency. Many justify Obama’s flip flopping with the excuse that Obama is just a politician, and this is what politicians do to win elections. But when is enough enough? The FISA bill, which Obama ended up SUPPORTING, is eviscerating the fourth amendment! The establishment excuses the Democrats for everything because they’re supposedly on “our” side. But the Democrats adopt all the positions of the “other” side such as continuing to finance the war in one country, helping to dismantle the constitution, refusing to impeach the president, and shilling for yet another corporate war that will knock the rest of civilized infrastructure from under the country’s feet, the dividends falling to the vultures. They are de facto, with the other side. They are worse, actually, because they say they are going to do all these progressive things, knowing all the while that they WON’T.
   There’s a jokey, “Ha ha, that’s the way it goes, you gotta eat this if you want us to win” sentiment. Meanwhile the Bill o Rights burns.
   Hertzberg writes (in the article about Obama), “It was inevitable that the boggier reaches of the blogosphere would eventually smell betrayal. In contrast, what bloggers call the MSM – the mainstream media – seldom trades in the currency of moral indignation. Although the better newspapers have regular features devoted to evaluating the candidates’ proposals for workability, the MSM generally eschews value judgments about the merits.”
   I totally disagree with this characterization of the MSM as an objective source, and frankly, the world needs more moral indignation. Here are several examples that support my case: the scandal about newspapers and tv news using Pentagon propagandists, war generals, as “objective” analysts for the Iraq war; the policy of several news networks’ use of two pro war people to counter the position of every anti war person; the news blackout and ridicule of 9/11 conspiracy theories, which do have some basis in fact; the framing of debates by limiting the scope of debate and the people who are “allowed” to debate (recall Dennis Kucinich’s difficulty in this area.)
   One notable exception to the New Yorker’s recent style: they sponsor Seymour Hersh’s concerned coverage of Abu Graib and the drum beat for war with Iran.

   …and that’s all the breath I have for today’s rant, folks.