Blanked Out

Another highlight of the forum was when Eva Young of the blog Dump Bachmann asked the panel why weren’t mainstream media reporters at the Living World Christian Center event featuring Michelle Bachmann as a speaker. The event drew national attention due to a perceived endorsement by the Center’s pastor and Bachmann’s comments that God called her to run for Congress.

Carr argued that this is where blogs excel - the only reason the story was broken was because of the blogs. Black admitted that had he in advance known of the event he still would not have attended due to time constraints.

The public’s impression of the mainstream media is a bit distorted. Many of us have ideas of huge rooms, crowded with reporters, ready to dispatch to any corner of the state in a moment’s notice. Truth be told, I doubt there are any newspapers or local TV stations that are not understaffed. Carr and Black stated that it was breaking stories like the Bachmann/Living World stories that scared mainstream media to death. The MSM knows that it will be difficult to compete with what Carr called “the army of human web crawlers”.

In my last post, I reported how Carr and Black were concerned that blogs exacerbate partisan differences. Specifically noted were errors of omissions. That blogs, while reporting truthful or novel information, leave out information damaging to “their guys”. Brodkorb stated that his blog was “not the League of Women Voters” and that his blog presents a specific point of view and that perspective   is valuable. Bodell said that even while partisanship may slice stories thinner and thinner it only takes one quote out of context in a mainstream media story to completely lose the original meaning. Blogs can give greater context and depth.

A perfect example of this dynamic occurred in the past 48 hours. New polls on several Minnesota races were released. Democratic blogs heavily reported the Zogby polls showing both Amy Klobuchar and Mike Hatch winning their respective races. Meanwhile, Republican blogs latched upon the Reuters/Zogby poll showing Bachmann 10 points up on Patty Wetterling. Neither constellation of blogs reported the polls that showed “their candidates” behind.

Part 3, “The End of Privacy” is still en route. In the mean time, if you haven’t signed up for GOTV yet, time is running out.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 1st, 2006 at 10:06 pm and is filed under Communications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.