Page 69 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Blogosphere: Pol t cs and Internet Journal sm

DC and as a “citizen journalist” movement to connect the press back to the general popu-
lation. They consider theirs an anti-elitist movement in a long tradition of American pop-
ulism. They point to declining voter turnout and a general dissatisfaction with the news
media as the results of increasing centralization in both the political and journalistic arenas
and claim that the blogs are a central tool for turning these trends around.
Of importance to the blog movement is the concept of “amateurism.” Though there are
media and political professionals who blog, much of the success of blogging comes from the
amateurs, people whose passions, and not their careers, have brought them into this new
arena. They feel that the careerist agendas of the professionals keep them from responding
to the real needs and desires of the population and eventually separate them off, creating a
modern elite that has very little understanding of the American people.
The defenders of the blogs see them as a means of revitalizing a nearly moribund Ameri-
can political system, one that includes the political parties and the news media that cover
them. They feel that the blogs will bring more and more people into political activity and
will create a new cadre of “citizen journalists,” people who care enough about a particular
issue to investigate it carefully and then present their findings on their blogs. They feel they
are reclaiming politics and the news media from forces that moved them away from their
traditional American base within the general public.

From the home page of Free Republic, http://www.freerepublic.com/home.htm.

DouBTErs oF ThE BLogs

In the more established quarters of political and news media power, many see
the blogs as an intrusion by the unlearned and unskilled. In addition, in the eyes
of many journalists, the very fact of writing for an audience demands adherence
to certain ethical standards—one is not able to say whatever one wants in a public
journalistic arena if one wants to be considered an ethical journalist. Instead, one
must strive for “balance,” walking a line between any two sides of an issue and
treating all opinions with respect. In addition, according to these journalists, one
must leave one’s politics at the door, reporting with candor and “objectivity.”
The belief in these kind of journalistic ethics has been growing and evolv-
ing since the time of the “penny press” before the Civil War, when newspaper
editors started to distance themselves from the politics they covered. It was
expressed most forcefully several generations later by Adolph S. Ochs on tak-
ing control of the New York Times in 1894. On August 18, 1896, he wrote, “It
will be my earnest aim that the New York Times give the news, all the news, in
concise and attractive form, in language that is parliamentary in good society,
and . . . to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party,
sect, or interests involved.” Belief in such an attitude was solidified in electronic
media through the influence of Edward R. Murrow of CBS News in the 1940s
and 1950s.
To someone attempting to follow in the footsteps of Ochs and Murrow, the
blogs, with their overtly partisan and sometimes quite vituperative attacks and