I first started reading the blogs because they were fast. Bloggers would usually post about an upcoming newsworthy subject, discuss every single ramification while fact checking to death, and then go on to something else. Then, two days or so after the blogs had moved on, I’d see the headlines on the front page of my local newspaper.
It’s this desire to find out what’s going on that drives many people to the blogs. Once they get here they soon find that the story they’re reading in the mainstream press isn’t really what’s going on. It’s spun, distorted, altered to conform to the preconceptions and prejudices of the author and his editors.
A dear friend of mine sent me a link to this article in the UK Independent, a British newspaper. The author is Rageh Omaar, whose day job is working for the BBC. He talks about how people in the United States are turning in ever greater numbers to blogs and the Internet to get their news. He gets it right when he says that people have lost faith in the traditional news organizations and are trying to find less biased sources.
What’s I found interesting is that he actually thought that American Big Media was too conservative! He closes his article by quoting Rick Mercier, a columnist for The Free Lance-Star in Virginia. Mr. Mercier is extremely critical of the Bush administration, and sees the invasion of Iraq as a failure of the press to do their job.
Well, you can find always find an op-ed somewhere that will support your confirm your own prejudices. What Mr. Omaar needs to do is take a look at the studies that prove that the American media is hopelessly slanted to the Left, and we’ve had proof of that since at least 1980.
Of course, we are talking about a guy who works for the BBC. The only thing I can say is that he’d better take the time for a little introspection and recognize his own bias while he has a chance. After all, a group of bloggers are nipping at the BBC’s heels even as we speak.
I would add one further advantage to reading blogs, and one that is decisive for me, personally – while a blogger will offer his personal opinion, he will also provide references to the material on which that opinion is based. I am empowered to easily do my own research and reach my own opinion. This is a courtesy the MSM has denied me for two decades; like “60 Minutes”, they tend to leave inconvenient facts on the cutting room floor. Candidly, I seldom disagree with the opinions of the 20 or so bloggers I read regularly, but I greatly appreciate the opportunity for an informed agreement.
Blogs and FNC are now my primary sources of information.
Conservative for Europe, not America. They start farther left and the Independent is farther than that.
Don’t get me started on the BBC.
If anyone has access to video archives of BBC News, here’s an anecdote I use to explain the BBC. When Bush went to S. Korea (early 2002 or thereabouts) there was the inevitable scene of the US President with binoculars overlooking the DMZ. BBC shows this clip with a voice over, and…. I fell out of my freeking chair…. with the clip of Bush they play subtle dark MUSIC underneath…. the kind of music you hear as the Death Star approaches Alderaan. Swear on my life. Check the archives, it’s real.
Now think about it….. Fox would never….. NEVER… do such a thing in a news report, not a documentary or some such, but a news report. Never. Never. But the BBC did.
Ho hum.
The BBC is not anti-American, per se. They are rabidly, vituperatively, acid-drippingly anti-Christian, anti-Israel, anti-Capitalist, anti-Conservative, and anti-Republican. They do not bother to hide it. And when something like the Hutton commission takes the BBC to task over the above, they react not at all differently in the slightest from how King Louis the XVI would react to a complaint from the peasantry. How dare you mere mortals question us?!?! (CBS too, apparently)
And the BBC broadcasts this globally, 24 hours a day.
God Bless Tony Blair and the people of the United Kingdom. But I begin to think that the BBC, an organization that once broadcast codes to the French Resistance, is now an enemy of liberty on this planet. This war today is about keeping hundreds of millions from dying in a vastly more horrific holocaust. And if those hundreds of millions DO die despite all our efforts, the BBC, CBS, New York Times, Le Monde…. the whole damn crew, will hold an ENORMOUS share of the blame.
And they will never, ever, ever admit any guilt in the slightest. Ever. You see, they exist upon a higher plane than the likes of you and I.
Bastards.
BBC’s documentaries on WW2 are similarly slant. For example, a documentary on Operation Bagaration and the destruction of German Army Group Center inevitably focused more on how Stalin oppressed the newly liberated lands. It’s fine to make a point, but make a documentary on it separately, time & place…
Despite forcing all those who have any form of television receiver to pay the license fee,the BBC also hates the British.
Bull Boring Crap
Of the top ten list on TTLB’s blogging ecosystem 4 are to the left, one is apolitical, and one (andrewsullivan.com) is arguably either way. There’s plenty of room for left wing blogs and they do get links and traffic where they’re good.
BTW 24 people in the UK were jailed for not paying the UK TV-tax last year.
Mr. Omaar was the BBC’s main Baghdad correspondent during the invasion. He took the information minister at his word until the very last. One would have assumed he had learned his lesson.