PVCC Puma Press: November 2004

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	Photo Illustration by DJ Greenfield
	Internet bloggers gain influence and break media monopoly while holding mainstream media accountable to the public.
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On June 2, 1988 CBS aired Dan Rather’s hour-long documentary entitled “CBS Reports: The Wall Within,” which claimed to tell the disturbing stories of a six Vietnam veterans, including the horrors they witnessed in combat and the troubles they endured after coming home. While the story later proved to be almost entirely false, CBS was not held accountable for its mistake.

On Sept. 8, 2004 Dan Rather’s piece on CBS News’ “60 Minutes II” showed four memos purporting to prove that President George W. Bush received preferential treatment during his stint in the National Guard. Dan Rather’s evidence this time was just as faulty as in 1988, but unlike the 1988 story, alternative media eventually held him and CBS News accountable. The mainstream media’s world turned upside-down with the sequence of events now known as “Rathergate.” A new journalistic animal has been on the prowl for some time, giving Internet users more options for news coverage: the blogosphere. Made up of everyday citizens expressing their opinions and reporting on news events in their own personal weblogs, (blogs, for short) the blogosphere has quickly emerged as a primary news source.

Ryan Pitts, online producer for spokesmanreview.com, the website for the Spokane, Washington Spokesman-Review, appreciates the new market for news that these blogs have made available. “Blogs provide a certain amount of synchronicity for the reader, pointing you toward information you didn't even realize you'd be interested in,” Pitts says. “Getting to know bloggers over time and trusting their recommendations because their tastes match yours helps this happen. In that sense, reading a blog is somewhat like sifting through a newspaper, because you happen across stories that interest you almost by accident.”

Pitts believes this is an advantage for the blogosphere. “Journalists are human, and journalists have foibles and sometimes their motivations do show through,” he says. When this happens to a supposedly unbiased reporter, consumers express outrage. A blogger can be open with his biases, allowing the reader to be the judge.

Immediately following Rather’s piece, bloggers found a new use for their energies: calling into question the judiciousness and integrity of network news and other prominent news organizations. At the same time bloggers broke through the dominance that the mainstream media has typically held for the last five decades. From Walter Cronkite to Rather to ABC’s Peter Jennings to NBC’s Tom Brokaw to the often over-the-top coverage of papers like “The New York Times” and “The Los Angeles Times,” conservatives have longed complained of liberal bias in the media Despite fears expressed mainly by those in the traditional media, the Internet is proving to be the greatest watershed for freedom of ideas since the printing press.

“Rathergate” proves this point better than any other case. While his 1988 documentary was questioned and eventually proven to be false, no communication existed to get the story to a wide audience. As “The National Review’s” Anne Morse reported, “The truth was uncovered by B.G. Burkett, a Vietnam veteran and author of “Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of its History and its Heroes. Burkett discovered that only one of the six vets used in the story had actually served in combat.” Morse goes on to explain that both Burkett and Thomas Turnage, then administrator of the Veterans Administration, told CBS of their concerns. CBS stood by its story, and most viewers never leaned the truth.

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CBS has been arrogant, diversionary, misleading, bullheaded, dismissive, shameless, narcissistic, secretive and unethical.
—Ryan Pitts, online editor spokesmanreview.com
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Contrast that sordid story with the events immediately following CBS News’ latest malfeasance. Just before midnight EST a blogger, known simply as “Buckhead,” posted to the Free Republic indicating that CBS’ documents appeared to be forgeries. From there, would-be private eyes began pursuing the truth

The next day, weblogs like Little Green Footballs (littlegreenfootballs.com), Powerline (powerlineblog.com) and RatherBiased (ratherbiased.com) raised serious questions about the documents’ authenticity. Some sought out the opinions of independent investigators. Powerline compared an actual signature of the documents’ supposed author, Jerry Killian, with the signature on a CBS document. The signatures were nothing alike.

Little Green Footballs recreated a CBS document on a home word-processor, almost perfectly matching the type of the purported original, supposedly written 21 years before. Soon the Los Angeles Times was breaking the news that the blogger known as “Buckhead” was an Atlanta attorney with Republican affiliations. But even the mainstream media’s attempt to shield Dan Rather and CBS News from their well-deserved fate was not enough.

CBS initially, as in 1988, stood behind its story. This time it was too late. By Sept. 10 the Washington Post stepped into the fray, reporting that CBS’ so-called “unimpeachable source” for the documents was actually a former Guard officer with a history of mental problems who had previously called President Bush a liar with "demonic personality shortcomings."

National talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity ran with the accusations of bias on Dan Rather’s part. Weblogs relentlessly uncovered the events that led to CBS’ rushed-airing of the story and the fact that CBS had spent five years looking for incriminating evidence against Bush. Dan Rather, for his part, stood by his story as long as he could, blaming the controversy on partisan attacks. CBS News finally relented after a week-and-a-half, with a disgraced Rather admitting that the documents probably were not authentic.

CBS’ actions infuriated Pitts, who has worked both sides of the aisle. Before going to work on his paper’s online version, Pitts was a reporter, editor and editorial writer for the print version. As a contributing blogger (along with some longtime Internet friends) for the Dead Parrot Society (deadparrots.net), Pitts has considered the ramifications of “Rathergate.”
“I’m stunned,” Pitts says. “CBS has been arrogant, diversionary, misleading, bullheaded, dismissive, shameless, narcissistic, secretive and unethical. Good Lord, we’re supposed to illuminate that kind of behavior, not illustrate it.” Pitts was especially upset by CBS News’ attempts to hide the deception after the fact. Like “Watergate” the cover-up may have been worse than the crime.

Roger Ailes of FOX News once said, “Most injuries in journalism are caused by journalists falling off their egos onto their IQs.” As crushing as this blow must be to Dan Rather’s ego, not to mention CBS News’, it promises to have an even larger impact on the mainstream media in general.

The Internet’s first blow to mainstream media occurred on Jan. 17, 1998. That was the day a relatively unknown blogger named Matt Drudge broke the story, from his own computer in his own apartment, that “Newsweek” magazine had killed, a story about then-President Bill Clinton and his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Drudge’s blog, The Drudge Report, maintained sole coverage of this story for three days, until the national media could no longer keep it down.

Soon Drudge and bloggers like him became a point of contention. Hillary Clinton could scarcely believe that a country like the United States could allow simple citizens to report the news. She referred to bloggers like Drudge as part of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Many in the media looked down upon the Matt Drudge’s of the world, but at the same time news organizations realized that in order to remain relevant, they too needed an Internet presence.

Pitts believes the increased media coverage is a positive. “More choices means everyone is competing for viewers, so news outlets don't get to be lazy,” he says. “If they are, they get called on it quicker than ever, and they suffer.” Still, he points to organizational strengths that give newspapers and network news tremendous advantages over bloggers, including greater access to sources and greater reach.

In addition, Pitts believes that the mainstream media can and must co-exist with the blogosphere. “You used to see a few people arguing that blogs would be the death of traditional media; I just don't see that popping up any more,” Pitts remarks. “Blogs are a valuable parallel system, and will serve as a check that ultimately pushes the mainstream media back toward where it needs to be. There are more ways to get the truth than ever, but there are also more ways to be deceived.”

The blogosphere has some advantages over newspapers and television news as well. “Newspapers have to be more responsive to their readers, and have to be willing to provide news in ways that readers want it,” Pitts says. “Readers are pretty clear that they want to be immediate, interactive, participatory news consumers, and print editions just don't lend themselves well to this.”

Ultimately, it will be the consumer that benefits from the wider spectrum of views, if he chooses to. “The thoughtful user has to be careful, because the fracturing market means it's very easy to only get your information from outlets who never challenge your point of view,” says Pitts. “Personally, I think this is a dangerous thing, and an easy thing to lapse into without ever really realizing you've done it.”

If the mainstream media hopes to remain relevant, Pitts says it must learn two things from CBS News’ failure. “First, the media is going to be a lot more careful,” he says. “Everyone saw what happened; it was like a train wreck. And you don't want to watch it happen to you.”

The second thing the mainstream media must do is look itself in the mirror. “Many readers are willing to forgive because journalists are, in fact, human beings and they screw up sometimes,” Pitts believes. “But many more readers are going to need to see that the media is really doing something to win back their trust. This won't be an easy thing; it will take both plenty of work and plenty of time.”

Whatever road mainstream media ultimately takes, it seems clear that from now on the blogosphere will be right behind, ready to pounce on any errant step.