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Meet Joe Blog
theodp writes "According to the new issue of Time, we may be in the golden age of blogging, a quirky Camelot moment in Internet history when some guy in his underwear with too much free time can take down a Washington politician. Amateur scribblers posting on the Web are becoming the tails that wag the media, says Time, citing an underperforming undergraduate at a small Christian college in Michigan as an example." Hey, if Circuits can discover USB, I don't see why Time can't discover weblogs.
Friendster, Blogging - get on the shelf next to Geocities (everyone will have a webpage by 1998!).
As far as the general public is concerned, the vast majority of bloggers don't matter.
After all, who is Joe Public going to trust the most, a fully professional New York Times employed scribe, or "Zergrush_7" ranting on his Livejournal.
Are you seriously suggesting that bloggers have more journalistic "credibility"? Many (not all) blogs I've read tend to be unabashedly biased rants and take extreme positions- or do nothing more than mindlessly link to other stories.
While a few news outlets have credibility problems, they're far from worthless, and there are tens of thousands of excellent reporters who have dedicated their lives to the pursuit of reporting, and actually have degrees in journalism. It is almost sickening to hear you equate them with bloggers, who have so little dedication, 95% of them stop blogging after a month or so.
Just because you watch FOX news and read USA Today doesn't mean journalism is dead, and it certainly doesn't mean that we should be turning to bloggers.
Please help metamoderate.
haha - yeah because the left wing media never does that. Oh wait, there is no left wing media, they are the mainsteam because they're entirely truthful and righteous. They would never do something like plug a left wing attack book disguised as a hard hitting interview *cough* 60 Minutes *cough*
Here is a news flash - the media, be they liberal or conservative, are all corporatist whores. That's why Fox TV shows can be completely sex and scandal driven, while their news side can be so conservative. They do whatever sells.
Just like that fatass Limbaugh - he's an infotainer. He'll probably be on decrying gay marriage a day after he announced his own third divorce. And Michael Moore and the liberals are no different - Mike is out to make a buck. Period. That fatass rides around in SUVs and flies on nice private jets all they time. You are dumb as hell if you take any of those infotainers on either side seriously - they say what their audience wants to hear.
Also blame lazy readers/listeners/viewers who don't actually read enough to distinguish between rubbish and truth. e.g. When Richard Clarke, the gut at the hub of the CSG wheel, says the Whitehouse flubbed the war on terror, are you going to believe him or some hack who says Clarke lacks any credibility because he as an axe to grind?
The right wing media has been taking advantadge of lazy journalists for years. For those of you who don't know, the "right wing media" -- Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, 700 Club, Hanity & Colms, Ann Coulter etc -- What they do is come up with terribly biased or completely false stories supporting the conservative agenda (status quo) and of course everybody dismisses the stories because the source is biased media! But lazy copy writers for legit news orgs pick up the stories, don't research them, and run with them! Then they *BECOME* "true".
Also refered to as Factoids by someone in the past, "Factoid: Something repeated often enough it becomes accepted as true."
A trained mind, skilled in critical thinking is harder for propaganda to overcome. This is why it's important to read as much about history as you can, starting with an open mind and questioning the veracity of everything you read. (This included!)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The right wing media has been taking advantadge of lazy journalists for years.
Oh yes, and the left-wing media never does any of that! What they say is all 100% God-given truth with no bias, hidden agendas, or outright lies at all!
The beginning of political maturity is realizing that some people you disagree with lie. The middle is realizing that some people you agree with lie too. I'll let you know what the end is when I get there.
Two words: "Jason Blair". (And mind you, that's just one convenient high-profile example, not the sum total of my point.) "Your" "side" has lazy people who like comfortable lies, too, and you're a chump or a useful idiot if you think otherwise. (And if you insist on measuring the positions based on those people, you won't mind that I return the favor, right?)