I think this pretty much depicts how MSM feels about bloggers, citizen media and online indy journalism — this quote from Brian Williams, anchor of NBC Nightly News, speaking to NYU journalism students:
You’re going to be up against people who have an opinion, a modem, and a bathrobe. All of my life, developing credentials to cover my field of work, and now I’m up against a guy named Vinny in an efficiency apartment in the Bronx who hasn’t left the efficiency apartment in two years.
Yes, those links are a strange set of bedfellows, I’ll admit. But it’s an interesting perception to add to the growing discussion about how bloggers, journalists, MSM and indymedia are intersecting. We’re not qualified nor credentialed enough to tow the party lines, I suppose. Nice to see him casually dismiss the most important thing to happen to journalism in about fifty years (besides the 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine), so hopefully it’ll be the thing that turns his job upside down and makes him relevant for a change.
But what’s revealing about what Williams said is that it indicates a pervasive attitude that writers outside the current MSM system are seen as unqualified, unwashed masses. And that only “they” can validate what we do on blogs and vlogs. Meantime, MSM clamors for the traffic of the Boing Boings, the DailyKos‘, the Crooks and Liars‘ the citizen coverage of worldwide volunteer blog network Metblogs (and even to an extent, Flickr users), and the sheer numbers of eyes not on their newscasts but instead on the YouTubes and Blips, which are damning them to come play in our world, like it or not.
And apparently, they don’t like it enough to even try and understand it — evident with Williams’ comments (NBC), Congdon’s journalistic clowning for ABC, and CBS’ recent Katie Couric’s blog plagiarism. To me, this revealed what we bloggers had been guessing all along, that MSM takes us bloggers (and us readers/viewers/consumers of new media) as seriously as we do their distinctions between content, opinion and advertising. Couric’s blog, chock full of personal “memories” cribbed from other writers (to make her look human?), was written by her producer. I’m guessing that’s standard practice for journalists with “credentials”. We just call it lame.
I think that MSM (like Brian Williams) show dislike and disrespect toward bloggers and vloggers for a number of reasons. And we see all the three-letter (and papery) mainstream media outlets as a constant conflict of interest that blur the line between fact/opinion/advertising (and there’s quite a bit of looking down our noses right back at them for not being able to grasp our tools). So I think they’re mostly feeling like sore losers because they’re stuck in the paleolithic era of reporting, and as one emailer put it in regards to my Congdon piece,
My theory is that because of the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and the corporate consolidation of the media, the self-correcting mechanism of blogs, along with a respect for disclosure and transparency, no longer exist in broad sections of the Fourth Estate. Fox and ABC News are perfect examples.
That would have me feeling as cranky as Williams, too. Awwww. It must suck when you can’t evolve. Also: this post gets to some good points: An Open Letter to Amanda Congdon (dustinlacina.vox.com, in reference to this Chron column).
Update, reader comment: Liberty Guys write me saying,
hi violet,
The only way that a massive corporate media outlet can lose at this is by beating itself – by compromising so much with government, business, and foundation interests that their point-of-view becomes transparently co-opted and worthless.
“Vinny” is kicking Williams’ blowdried, made-up ass precisely because he does not rub elbows with corporate, foundation, or congressional fatcats at cocktail parties or anywhere else, and could not give a crap about their interests, only about his own, and those of his friends and family as he sees them.
By itself, “Vinny’s” point of view is incomplete, but millions of people like him are floating enough substantial ideas out there that the average person can pull enough of these bits of truth out of the aether and integrate them into an opinion different from the one Williams and his corporate masters want to force on him.
And it scares the bejeesus out of the elitist scumbags that populate corporate media, and their wannabees in J-schools.
We have them on the run. Enough said!
The Liberty Guys
Promoting Liberty, Peace, and Free Enterprise
