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When
Journalists Attack
As
the 2006 political season comes to a head,
journalists are becoming more hostile to bloggers
who invade their space.
The
on-again, off-again, love-hate relationship
between Virginia’s mainstream media and the
Commonwealth’s political blogosphere continues
to heat up as Election Day approaches.
Prior
to this election, the traditional press seemed to
regard blogs as quirky by-products of cynical
rock-throwers or over-eager grassroots activists.
Once the Webb campaign won the Democratic primary,
traditional journalists became more fascinated
with bloggers. They ran feature stories in their
papers and provided access for some bloggers to
ply their trade in op-ed pages. A number of
notable journalists from larger news outlets
participated in the Charlottesville and
Martinsville blogging confabs.
Now,
in the post-macaca world, traditional journalists
have turned on the blogosphere, using their ink to
step up attacks on what they see as irresponsible
purveyors of the citizen media.
Two
recent incidents illustrate this newer phenomenon.
The editorial pages of two of the Commonwealth’s
venerable newspapers – the Richmond
Times-Dispatch and the Virginian-Pilot
– berated bloggers essentially for contributing
to the overall decline in civility in Virginia’s
political discourse.
In
a Sunday edition a few weeks back, the Times-Dispatch
editorial page lashed out at bloggers - and those
who enable them - for cheapening the 2006 election
season. Apparently, the good folks whose op-ed
pages provided a forum for Massive Resistance in
the 1950’s and 1960’s, antagonized
Richmond’s growing black political leadership,
and gave intellectual cover to the Republican
realignment in the 1980’s and 1990’s, have
come to the conclusion that bloggers and blog
aficionados upset the preferred gentility of the
Senate race. It was as if the Times-Dispatch’s
interpretation of what the real “issues”
should be were the only appropriate subjects for
discussion. The Times-Dispatch
editorialists, despite joining the fray with their
own blogs, even felt it necessary to tell bloggers
to “grow up.”
Around
a month later, the Virginian-Pilot, the Times-
Dispatch’s competitor in the race for second
place behind the Washington Post’s Virginia
bureaus, went after the Bearing Drift blog
for posts about Phil Kellam, the Democratic
candidate in the 2nd congressional district. In
that case, the Pilot singled out the blog
for its “dubious facts and wild opinions.” In
this instance, the Pilot employed a
cleverer device than its Richmond rival –
revealing some of its own checkered past and
controversies as illustrations of what not to
write – to deliver a paternalistic spanking to
Jim Hoeft & Co. The Pilot equated
blogging and bloggers with the early days of
American yellow journalism, expressing
sentiments in print that Virginia bloggers
have known for quite some time. The Tidewater
daily’s editorial dripped with condescension,
indicating that bloggers are still “learning”
their lessons. It should be noted that the
editorial writer in question later joined the
Bearing Drift crew for a podcast, graciously
taking his lumps from aggrieved bloggers.
Dumping
the ills of the brutal 2006 political season in
the lap of blog writers is convenient cover for
the emerging reality of public life in Virginia.
Unencumbered by the quaint rules of journalistic
ethics, bloggers as participant- observers in the
political process have trumped the MSM as sources
for intriguing news stories and interesting
opinions. Those who lambaste the dirt-digging of
bloggers should be asking why all of these
allegations and, in some cases, facts have just
now come to light. None of the men and woman who
have been run through the blog wringers is new to
public life. They have all served in electoral or
appointed positions subject to public and media
scrutiny. In some instances, the incidents in
question - alleged racism and sexism, unique
ethnic heritage, assault charges, questionable
financial disclosures, etc. - were open secrets
and part of the public record. At the very least,
the issues would have been discernible with some
gumshoe sleuthing by traditional journalists.
Furthermore,
the charges against bloggers seem trumped up given
that the MSM has seen fit to investigate so-called
character issues in the past. During the last few
decades, notable public figures have been
subjected to media inquiries about massages, drug
usage, helicopter rides, wire-taps, and sexual
harassment to name a few. Despite the irrelevance
of these issues to the day-to-day governance of
the Commonwealth, the journalism crowd still
covered these matters. Yet, when bloggers probed
character issues this campaign season, they
somehow violated standards of decency that exist
in the ether of Virginia’s democracy.
However
noble their intentions in covering the eyes and
ears of the virginal citizenry, the traditional
press never saw fit to bring much of this
information into the marketplace of ideas until
the tin-foil wearing peasants with digital
pitchforks showed up to crash the gates the of
Virginia’s genteel, but not-so-gentle, political
castles, loudly shouting what political insiders
have whispered for years.
As
bloggers challenge MSM opinion-makers and pundits,
newspapers like the Times-Dispatch and Pilot
face the prospect of watching technologically
savvy and well-educated citizens provide analysis
and commentary rivaling or even exceeding the
abilities of their conventional journalists. In
contemporary Virginia, ivory-tower media types are
no longer the sole source of emerging political
thought or leaks; bloggers have joined the hit
parade with a vengeance, posing a unique threat to
the very livelihoods of MSM opinion mavens. The
breaking of the MSM monopoly could well
precipitate a long-term shift in the state’s
public affairs media business similar to the
transformation that “reality” programming has
sparked in the realm of television sitcoms and
dramas.
With
pesky bloggers nipping at the heels of the big
boys, it should surprise no one that the
newspapers would fight back. The irony is that
their attacks are aimed at a dedicated segment of
their readership: Bloggers are leading consumers
of journalism work product.
Still,
Virginia’s citizen media need not worry much
about their bigger siblings in the house of
political communications. Although the pointed
words do sting, as long as the Mainstream Media
does not throw actual sticks and stones, bloggers
will not feel much hurt. Well, not too much.
--
October 23, 2006
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