Media

There have been many predictions about the impact of blogging. Some people have claimed that this hobby of ours (la blogga nostra?) will replace main stream media some day. Eventually there will be no more TV news shows, no more newspapers. Everyone will get their fast breaking news from the blogs.

I think this prediction is not very realistic, if for no other reason than bloggers usually write about items they find in the news instead of getting out there and nailing down the story by themselves. But there is no question that blogs have done a great service to this country.

The scandal known as Ra^thergate showed just how blogs can be used to keep traditional media sources honest. Forged documents were held up as evidence in a story that would have seriously damaged President Bush’ chances to win the 2004 election. If not for bloggers, history would have been altered.

Ra^thergate is the single great blog success story so far even though it is two long years in the past, but it has some very long legs. The Washington Post reports that Dan Rather will probably be forced into retirement some time this year.

It could very well be that the scandal which bears his name has nothing to do with the end of Rather’s career. I do note that the author of the WaPo story keeps mentioning that piece of old news, though.

One of the executives at CBS had an epitaph for an old anchor who spent his career in the service of one of the traditional media giants.

The CBS executives hope a dignified exit can be arranged and that Rather can find a second career, perhaps in cable, the sources say.

Or, I suppose, he could start his own blog.

Isaiah Berlin’s contrast of the hedgehog & the fox is widely applicable, though I’m not sure it works as well as Philip E. Tetlock does when he applies it to pundits. He is, however, quite correct in his assumption that A) being extreme is likely to be more often wrong, and, B) also more interesting. Partisan pundits (or ones with a fixed idea) are seldom broad, deep, historical thinkers but rather hyperbolic, emotional ones.

He is also right, few are asked to compare their prognostications with what actually came to pass. While our politicians, rightly, are held accountable for assessments and predictions of years ago, the pundits doing the critiques are seldom confronted with their unfulfilled prophesies of even a few months.

Of course, bloggers, with access to a variety of search engines and a keen sense of competition with the “old” media, sometimes entertain themselves with just these discrepancies, but our imaginations prefer broad & graspable generalization rather than more ambiguous modified ones.

This is discussed in more length in Tetlock’s Expert Political Judgment: How good is it? How can we know? (Thanks to A&L.)

All whistleblowers are not altruistic. “It is widely believed at ABC News that the e-mails were leaked by a former employee who has a vendetta against Green.” The ABC producer has apologized to the White House (which made him puke) and Madeleine Albright (who has “Jew shame” and besides, well, he didn’t like her). Nonetheless, he’s given a month without pay to think it over.

On the other hand, I’d prefer the transparency of free & open speech. I suspect we might more easily talk out problems & reach solutions if the bullshit factor were a bit lower.

Last year I discussed how the newspaper industry in general and the New York Times specifically were losing customers at an alarming rate. Now a blog dedicated to discussing business matters takes a look at the financial health of that august news organization. He even has a graph!

Summary: Things don’t look good.

(Since this is a “go look” post where I didn’t add anything of substance, the comments are closed. Please click on over and let Tom know what you think. He is smarter than I am about this stuff, anyway.)

Today’s Strategypage.com has an interesting post by Harold Hutchinson. (Post dated March 7, 2006.) The post discusses a recent decision by a Federal judge which forced the release of the names of more than 500 detainees currently being held at Gitmo. The court case was brought by the Associated Press in order to force the DoD to comply with a Freedom of Information request that they had filed.

Hutchinson says that the decision is a great victory for our terrorist enemy in the Global War on Terror, and compares it to the Axis powers in WWII learning that their codes had been broken by the Allies.

I don’t know enough about the intelligence gathered through interrogations at Gitmo to know if Hutchinson’s assessment of the damage to our efforts is hyperbole or not, but it is certain that one point he made in his short essay is correct. The release of this information will put the lives of those who cooperated in the capture of the detainees at risk. Not only that but, knowing something about the feud mentality of most terrorists, the lives of their families will also be in jeopardy.

Let’s be very clear about this. Innocent people will probably die.

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