MSM Whiners
Juan Cole has a nice post on why bloggers have absolutely no reason whatsoever to cave to any pressures from the mainstream media.
Matthew Haughey took offense with bloggers' use of the term 'MSM' for mainstream media. And then he went so far as to threaten to stop reading blogs that use the term 'MSM.' Oh Dear. Please Matthew. Please don't stop reading blogs. We need you so.
Juan Cole doesn't care and no one else should either. Then Juan goes on to explain how blogs differ from the MSM.
The difference, Matt, is that we are independent actors, not part
of a small set of multi-billion dollar corporations. The difference
is that we are not under the constraints of making a 15% profit. The
difference is that we are a distributed information system, whereas
MSM is like a set of stand-alone mainframes. The difference is that we
can say what we damn well please.
If we were the mainstream media (perhaps better thought of as
corporate media), we would care if you threatened to stop reading us.
Because although we might be professional news people, we would have
the misfortune to be working for corporations that are mainly be about
making money.
[...]
If we were mainstream media we would be wholly owned subsidiaries of
General Electric, the Disney Corporation, Time Warner, Rupert Murdoch,
Viacom and so on and so forth. Ninety percent of cable channels are
owned by the same companies that own the big television networks.
[...]
So, yes, Matt. There is a difference between these little dog and
pony shows we post from our homes, with no editor, no CEO, no boss,
and no resources beyond our personal experiences, talent and acumen. If
Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo was published by mainstream
media, would he still be allowed to say everything he now says? Would
Tom Engelhardt be allowed to discuss the ways in which the Iraq
quagmire suggests the limits of superpowerdom if he were working for the
Big Six? If Bill Montgomery worked for The Weather Channel, would he
be allowed to criticize Senator Rick Sanatarium for trying to keep
Federal forecasters from "competing" with private weather forecasting
companies? Would Riverbend be allowed to be so incisive if she worked for a big Iraqi computer firm?
All I have to say is that even though I'm a little tiny speck in the blogosphere, I'm a very proud little speck.
Oh, and Na, Na, You can't catch us!
Matthew Haughey took offense with bloggers' use of the term 'MSM' for mainstream media. And then he went so far as to threaten to stop reading blogs that use the term 'MSM.' Oh Dear. Please Matthew. Please don't stop reading blogs. We need you so.
Juan Cole doesn't care and no one else should either. Then Juan goes on to explain how blogs differ from the MSM.
The difference, Matt, is that we are independent actors, not part
of a small set of multi-billion dollar corporations. The difference
is that we are not under the constraints of making a 15% profit. The
difference is that we are a distributed information system, whereas
MSM is like a set of stand-alone mainframes. The difference is that we
can say what we damn well please.
If we were the mainstream media (perhaps better thought of as
corporate media), we would care if you threatened to stop reading us.
Because although we might be professional news people, we would have
the misfortune to be working for corporations that are mainly be about
making money.
[...]
If we were mainstream media we would be wholly owned subsidiaries of
General Electric, the Disney Corporation, Time Warner, Rupert Murdoch,
Viacom and so on and so forth. Ninety percent of cable channels are
owned by the same companies that own the big television networks.
[...]
So, yes, Matt. There is a difference between these little dog and
pony shows we post from our homes, with no editor, no CEO, no boss,
and no resources beyond our personal experiences, talent and acumen. If
Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo was published by mainstream
media, would he still be allowed to say everything he now says? Would
Tom Engelhardt be allowed to discuss the ways in which the Iraq
quagmire suggests the limits of superpowerdom if he were working for the
Big Six? If Bill Montgomery worked for The Weather Channel, would he
be allowed to criticize Senator Rick Sanatarium for trying to keep
Federal forecasters from "competing" with private weather forecasting
companies? Would Riverbend be allowed to be so incisive if she worked for a big Iraqi computer firm?
All I have to say is that even though I'm a little tiny speck in the blogosphere, I'm a very proud little speck.
Oh, and Na, Na, You can't catch us!
posted by cookie christine @ 4/26/2005
2 Comments:
At April 26, 2005,
Anonymous said…
They can't catch you, Cookie. But, oh, they're trying. Regulating political speech on the internet is next on "popular" War Preznit's popular Republican agenda.
And who can blame them! They have to do something to stop this liberal media!
At April 27, 2005,
cookie christine said…
Well they gotta push that dismantling social security thingy, then get that fillibuster axed, then get DeLay out of trouble, and all the while keeping up not hating them, cuz 2006 is just around the corner.
I'm hopin' they put that one on the back burner.
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