Crucial for Spreading Accurate Information
We've all seen it.
A story that bloggers have bird-dogged for many months, gaining so much traction that the mainstream media is finally forced to cover it.
David Steele - former 20-year Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer, the second-ranking civilian in U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence, and former CIA clandestine services case officer - says that blogging is crucial for saving our country.
Dan Rather points out that “roughly 80 percent” of the media is controlled by no more than six, and possibly as few as four, corporations. As I wrote in July:
The mainstream media are rabidly pro-war and refuse to disclose that many of the "independent" pundits they interview are actually lobbyists. The mainstream press has become lazy, and most of the stories are fed to them by PR firms.This fact has been documented for years, as shown by the following must-see charts prepared by:
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This image gives a sense of the decline in diversity in media ownership over the last couple of decades:
People want change - that's why so many voted for Obama. But as Newsweek's Evan Thomas admitted:
By definition, establishments believe in propping up the existing order. Members of the ruling class have a vested interest in keeping things pretty much the way they are. Safeguarding the status quo, protecting traditional institutions, can be healthy and useful, stabilizing and reassuring....
"If you are of the establishment persuasion (and I am). . . ."
In other words, many editors, publishers, producers and reporters think of themselves as being part of the establishment class, and so do everything they can to protect those in power.
No wonder trust in the news media is crumbling.
On the other hand, as I wrote a year ago, it is possible to get direct-from-source news on the web:
And as award-winning investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill said recently:Many of the world's top PhD economics professors and financial advisors have their own blogs...
The same is true in every other field: politics, science, history, international relations, etc.
So what is "news"? What the largest newspapers choose to cover? Or what various leading experts are saying - and oftentimes heatedly debating one against the other?
I think we're in a moment where corporations are more dominant over newsgathering and news production and disseminating information than they've ever been.So the blogosphere is certainly vital.....
Contrary to that, though, you also have this sort of "citizen journalism" rising up, where you have people that are staring their own blogs or their own web sites.