December 10, 2004
USEFUL IDIOTS
Oldtimey media helps conservative candidates, writes Peter Murphy:
Bush didn't try to influence journalists. They were for John Kerry. Instead, he went to rallies, looked into the camera, and spoke directly to voters.
By contrast, Kerry's speeches were echoes of the day's news stories. Kerry won the hearts of journalists, but Bush won the popular vote.
The same is true in Australia. Mark Latham was the media's candidate. John Howard won the election - and the Senate. The brutal fact is that media gatekeepers matter less and less in elections. In the internet age, people prefer information to opinion. They make their own judgements. They smell a rat when opinion is wrapped up as news.
In the US presidential election, the two social groups most strongly in favour of Kerry were journalists and academics. What is really telling is that public opinion is no longer influenced by these groups ...
Successful political candidates sidestep the media and speak directly to the electorate. This is not just Howard or Bush - Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan did the same. This is why left-leaning media hurt the Labor Party.
Not as much as the left-leaning media hurts itself. Here's fact-dodging CBS trashing bloggers:
Case precedent on political speech as it pertains to blogs does not exist. But where journalists' careers may be broken on ethics violations, bloggers are writing in the Wild West of cyberspace. There remains no code of ethics, or even an employer, to enforce any standard.
What standards were enforced by CBS when it ran bogus memos?
Like all media, blogs hold the potential for abuse. Experts point out that blogs' unregulated status makes them particularly attractive outlets for political attack.
Experts also point out that the influence of mainstream media makes it an even more attractive outlet for political attack.
"The question is: What are the appropriate regulations on the Internet?" asked Kathleen Jamieson, an expert on political communication and dean of the Annenberg School for Communications. "It's evolved into an area that we need to do more thinking about."
And while you're thinking about that, think about this: CBS attempted to derail a wartime Presidential campaign by claiming that a Microsoft Word document had been typed in 1973. What are the appropriate regulations, Kenneth? And while we're on the subject of folks lost in the past ...
When Vietnamese troops overran his village in 1979, Romam Chhung Loeung, a Khmer Rouge guerrilla, had no option but to flee with friends and family into the dense jungle of northeast Cambodia.
Twenty-five years later, the group emerged from the forest in clothes made of bark and leaves, unaware that the war was over, the Vietnamese had gone and Pol Pot was dead.
Their first question: "Is Dan Rather still on CBS?"
Posted by Tim Blair at December 10, 2004 03:23 AMI wish that it were generally the case that left-leaning media did more damage to the left than to the right. This may be so in the US and Australia, but here in the UK, the relentless media drip feed of left-wing metropolitan attitudes hardly works to the benefit of the Conservative party.
Posted by: rexie at December 10, 2004 at 03:40 AMBut is the Conservative party right-wing ? Or any wing ?
Posted by: dewi at December 10, 2004 at 04:01 AMThe documents, also obtained by CBS News,Does anyone else have the involuntary eye-rolling response as I do? Posted by: Spiny Norman at December 10, 2004 at 04:02 AM
"The question is: What are the appropriate regulations on the Internet?" asked Kathleen Jamieson, an expert on political communication and dean of the Annenberg School for Communications.
Allow me to save you four years of tuition at the Annenberg School of Communications: the above is called "the money quote." It says it all. Of course the answer is government regulation! How on Earth do these journalists get off saying that they are the "watchdogs of society" while whining in the lap of the Nanny State?
The fitting punishment is that these people are scarcely even any good as journalists; they've spent so much time begging for scraps from the table they can't hunt anymore. That whole CBS story "on blogs" is little more than a position paper on how to suppress them. (This after trying to score some of the market share with their own blogs, and failing.)
Posted by: Nightfly at December 10, 2004 at 04:30 AMWhat was Romam Chhung thinking? Bark and leaves? No one's wearing brown and green this season.
Posted by: Amos at December 10, 2004 at 05:07 AMWhat was Romam Chhung thinking? Bark and leaves?
Good thing he didn't run into a North Korean.
Posted by: Robert Crawford at December 10, 2004 at 05:43 AMDoes anyone else have the involuntary eye-rolling response as I do?
I get the same response when I read an article that contains, "...but the turkey was not real."
Posted by: Quentin George at December 10, 2004 at 05:57 AMTwenty-five years later, the group emerged from the forest in clothes made of bark and leaves, unaware that the war was over, the Vietnamese had gone and Pol Pot was dead.
I can see the wheels turning in Hollywood right this very moment......"GREAT REALITY TV SHOW PLOT"
"...blogs unregulated status..."
Have any of these people studied US history? Do they understand what a constitutional republic is? (Don't answer that.)
The authority of the US government is based on the assent of the people to be governed, by the granting of certain limited powers to the government by the people--and the default position herein is to question some activity because it operates unfettered from government regulation. Maybe such observers believe that it requires a license from the government in order to exercise freedom of speech and press?
Someone the dean of a graduate school should be embarassed into resignation for such inanity.
Posted by: Forbes at December 10, 2004 at 09:53 AMI suspect the trash talk on blogs/internet has something to do with the about to be released results of SeeBS's long awaited report on the Mapes/Rather Memogate debacle. Somehow, I feel like a wall might feel as it's being primed before the paint is slathered on. But I could be wrong...
Posted by: PM at December 10, 2004 at 11:02 AMAnd their next queston: Is Richie Benaud still calling the cricket?
And: is Jim Waley stil reading the news on Network Nine?
Richard Broinowski was recently on ABC holding forth on all things nuclear (and flogging his book on same)
Some pearlers;
1. the reason that the UN is in a weakened state is that the US castigated it;
2 during the Cold War nukes were held in check. Now the US is the Superpower nukes are running out of check
3 the reason that Russia is now cranking up its nuclear weapon program is because of (2)
4 with modern lasers its easy to separate the various molecules into a high percentage of weapons grade material
5 The Lucas Heights information on the need for radioactive material for medical needs is pure propoganda, we can import it from canada etc.
6 previous safeguards on exporting Uranium ore (sent to a good home etc by Fraser/ Hawkie) have been dropped (by Howard) and its now governed by market forces
7 Israel has nukes because of powerful lobby in US
8 RB has no technical/scientific expertise, is only a lawyer and diplomat
9 Iran only want nukes because of (2), all this could be solved by just having a good chat
10 ditto korea etc etc
Made me sick to think just how twisted his speil was.
bah humbug. Theere are precedents on speech as it pertains to the internet, maybe not specificall on political blogs. Courts around the world have decided that publishing on the internet is equivalent to publishing on printed paper in the region where it is downloaded. The headline case on the is the Gutnick case in the Australian high court (I tried to post a link but the court website is down). There have been plenty of cases where internet publishers have been found guilty of libel. You don't need to be a legal genius to work out that all what a court will do is take the standards that apply to old school MSM and apply them to the internet publishing.
The music swapping cases have shown that copyright still exists.
The big difference is that the internet allows people with minimal resources to publish and the first rule of litigation is "make sure that the entity you are suing has sufficient assets to make it worth your while".
Posted by: Pauly at December 10, 2004 at 02:57 PM