Rob Cannon

  http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-vppin143966771sep14,0,5921308.column?coll=ny-news-columnists

“Sept. 9, 2004, will be remembered as a paradigm-shifting day in media history. That was the day the "blogosphere" took down CBS News.”

I guess other people are picking up the significance of what I posted a few days ago.  For the longest time, Freedom of the Press was meant as a safeguard against a government that has gone haywire.  The press is there to challenge the government when it is trying to abuse its power.  But what happens when the press tries to abuse its power?

Over my lifetime, there has been a shift in the broadcast news from a institution that delivered facts and checked them (do you remember when the editorializing was confined to an editorial segment at the end of the news?) to one that tries to deliver sensationalized stories or tries to tailor the news it reports to a specific agenda.  But until very recently, there has not been any widespread power to keep the press in check.  Sure there have been a few watchdog organizations such as the Media Research Center and Times Watch, but their exposure has been fairly limited.

You would think that competitive pressure between news outlets would serve as correcting mechanism, but it seems that the Press has a herd mentality when it comes to new stories.  If one outlet reports on something, they all flock to it.  How else do you explain why the Ramsey and Peterson murders are huge headline stories when hundreds of other murders (some even more sensational) just get ignored.  Any time a big story breaks, it doesn’t take long for the collective press to come to a consensus on how to report the story.

But now, there is the blogshere.  Millions of people are reading various blogs that deal with all kinds of topics and this has developed into a new channel to deliver news and ideas.  When something fishy appears in the Press, that can get challenged and the idea (if it is worthy) will spread like wildfire through the blogsphere.  Suddenly there is a practical means to keep the Press in check.  And it seems to be working.

Now I don’t expect the blogsphere to replace the Press as a means of delivering news, but it will server as a reminder to the Press that its job is to report FACTS and not push sensation or political agenda.

Now back to more technical discussions….