Everyone’s a Journalist
July 18th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Hey all y’all lunatic leftists at Nutroots Nation — your uptown competitors at the Defending the American Dream summit hate the MSM as much as you do… but for entirely different reasons.
At a training session on “Understanding and Critiquing the Old Media,” conservative bloggers and activists vented their fury at the dreaded Liberal Media. Right-wing pundit Dan Gainor explained what conservatives seek: “We know the media is over there,” Gainor said, pointing to his far left. “Statistically it’s been proven by every survey.”
But, he said, “We don’t want to move them over here,” pointing to his far right. So does that mean the MSM should be disciplined in its centrism?
Nope. Gainor’s argument is strangely postmodern: The Right only seeks objectivity and unbiased reporting (Fair and Balanced!). But his idea of an unbiased media is apparently one that adopts every right-wing talking point and remains fuzzy, at best, about troubling facts. Global Warming is a Hoax! The Surge is Working! Barack Obama is a Muslim! News outlets must be pressured to shed their liberal bias, Gainor said. Crib the tactics of the Left, he urged. Call your newspapers and complain about biased stories. Praise them when they get it right. “We win by holding their feet to the fire.”
The next speaker, Daniel Glover of Eyeblast.tv, took the audience on a different ride. “We don’t need the liberal media like we used to,” he said. “We can actually be the media.” What followed was the usual blogger boosterism, similar in content, one suspects, to talks occurring at this very moment down at Netroots Nation. Stuff about exploiting the Long Tail. Using video to tell stories online. Creating media narratives through the combined voices of bloggers. Keeping conservative politicians accountable. The power of Web 2.0. Etc. Viewed from one angle, Glover was just pushing conservative bloggers to catch up with their progressive counterparts.
But then the conversation took a turn for the awkward. A woman in the audience pointed out that it was actually a liberal blogger that broke the story on Huffington Post about Obama’s “bitter” comments uttered at a private San Francisco fundraiser. What if a conservative blogger heard a right-wing politician say something similar?, she asked. What if that politician was John McCain? Does the citizen-journalist have a responsibility to report that? The woman thought not, but she wanted some reassurance.
Uh-oh. A real question about ethics! The room seemed ill-equipped to deal with the conundrum. One man suggested that Arianna Huffington allowed the blogger to report the “bitter” comment because Huffington wanted to help Hillary. Glover started talking about the Porkbusters campaign, an effort by conservative bloggers to fight government waste.
The woman pushed her question harder, with a specific example. She said she had attended two intimate John McCain fundraisers, each at a multi-million-dollar mansion. “[McCain] tells this joke all the time,” she said. “He says, ‘Obama wants everyone to own a home, but I want everyone to own a home like this’. Everybody laughs and I go ‘oppph,’ because we’re in a four-million-dollar home, you know what I mean?”
A discussion ensued about how politicians need to be aware that anything they say can and will be reported. “Everyone’s a journalist,” one audience member remarked. The presenter pointed out that some stealth blogger from Netroots Nation could be in the audience recording this very conversation. “Think about that before you say anything,” he said.
How much more meta can you get? A conservative blogger worried that a progressive blogger might blog on bloggers discussing the perils of blogging.
July 21st, 2008 at 5:31 pm
The presenter pointed out that some stealth blogger from Netroots Nation could be in the audience recording this very conversation. “Think about that before you say anything,” he said.
Oh, now that is just too deliciously ironic, since a bunch of wingnuts did come over to NN.