Citizen Journalism & Blogs recognized as a Media factor by Washington Post
In John Harris’ article, New Media A Weapon in New World Of Politics he analyses the effect that “new media” in the form of blogs, websites, radio talk shows and other fast forms of communication to the masses.
He documents how Clinton talked about New Media in the wake of the recent ruckus on Fox News–
he said Democrats of his generation tend to be naive about new media realities. There is an expectation among Democrats that establishment old media organizations are de facto allies — and will rebut political accusations and serve as referees on new-media excesses.“We’re all that way, and I think a part of it is we grew up in the ’60s and the press led us against the war and the press led us on civil rights and the press led us on Watergate,” Clinton said. “Those of us of a certain age grew up with this almost unrealistic set of expectations.”
Few conservatives would make a similar miscalculation. Many of the first generation of new media platforms, including Limbaugh’s show and Drudge’s Web site, first flourished because of a conviction among conservatives that old media were unfair.
He’s on to something, considering that recently it was bloggers who broke the Foley story and made ABC sit up and pay attention to it enough to dig out the real dirt. It was also bloggers who outed Stevens and Byrd as the ones who opposed the Anti-Pork Legislation recently passed in the Senate. Grassroots movements which have done their recruiting on the web recently got politicians to pay attention to the problems in the Telecommuncations Reform Act to the point where it’s been shelved at least until after the election. And it’s bloggers who have been passing the torch about the recent FCC scandal, which big media hasn’t been reporting at all– with the result that over a thousand people showed up at the FCC town meeting in LA to protest further big media mergers.
It’ll be interesting to see how the 2006 and 2008 elections are shaped by the trend. And make no mistake, they surely will be.
Technorati Tags: Citizen Journalism, Blogs, New Media, Talk Shows, Politics, Scandal, Washington Post, Clinton, FCC
