Bloggers’ Power?

Few hours later, after September 8, 2004 CBS TV Show 60 Minutes, tons of bloggers showed up on Weblogs like a mushroom after the rain. The purpose - 60 Minutes anchor Dan Rather reported that they got official materials that shows how George W. Bush got preferential treatment in the Texas Air National Guard. The records were written by Bush's commander, the late Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian during 1972 and 1973. CBS also published the Killian’s Memos on its website. From the professional viewpoint – Dan Rather’s report was blatantly biased, but readers could find biased thoughts in the Weblogs that offered ‘support-Bush’ and ‘anti – Bush’ articles. Rather is known as the anchor of one of the “Big Three” who was never granted an interview by George H.W. Bush and also his son George W. Bush during their presidencies. The second noticeable mark of Rather is that he is known for having a liberal bias for much of his journalist career. The accusations quite soon also appeared in the mainstream media (MSM), such as, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Chicago Sun-Times. The Republican supporters were the first who reacted to the published Killian Memos in the CBS website and claimed that the documents were forgeries. There were many kinds of bloggers: men who remember stories told by their ex-military fathers, uncles and friends, ex-military guys, journalists, just ‘mumblers’, and even people of high position. For example, the rightwing Web site FreeRepublican.com blogger “Buckhead” turned out to be Harry MacDougald, a Republican lawyer in Atlanta. Ratgarete.com was sponsored by Richard Viguerie, a famous conservative fund-raiser. Columbia Journalism Review journalist Corey Pein wrote an article “Blog–Gate” where he mentioned that some Weblogs “were fed up by the conservative Media Research Center and by Creative Response Concepts, the same p.r. firm that promoted the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.”

If I have to answer the question. How do bloggers fit into the communication sphere of America? Do they make media better, or do they distract media from the important issues of our world? Well, probably I won’t say anything new and I will just agree with the idea that there are two kinds of blogger: those who just talk and those who really react to the news and make some significant contribution or even find completely new information, or the real facts behind a doubtful news story. There are bloggers who make a living doing only blogs! Perhaps we can count those on two hands, but I am sure that the influence of bloggers will keep growing. There is no doubt that Weblogs also shape the Main Stream Media; there are cases in U.S when bloggers found information faster than journalists and also cases when MSM followed the blogger’s lead - for example in the CBS’s fiasco with the Killian Memos. The times when organizations within MSM competed only with each other to run a story first, is over. MSM has to compete also with Weblogs. I am largely in favor of the Blog-Media, though as I mentioned in my previous blog, the speed with which bloggers can spread their stories means that there can be lot of false stuff out there before the truth emerges in the bloggshpere, and when it does emerge, it can be too late - the lies may have caused irreversible damage to someone or to some organization, and/or the public may simply have lost interest. Paraphrasing one of the Dan Rather’s ‘Ratherism’ “Turn the light down, the party just got wilder!” I would like to say quite similar: “Turn the light on, the competition just got tougher”