A depressing alternative
We have heard much about the great potential for blogs to challenge and usurp the MSM, in part because of their ability to bring together experts from their fields to continually review and advise on the issues being discussed.
Well, reading Daily Kos's attack on Carol Darr, the director of the Institute I work at, the future appears to be a rather more depressing one. Carol Darr submitted a detailed set of comments to the FEC regarding their plans to amend campaign finance regulations to include public communications via the Internet, including blogging. If I was looking for a serious analysis of the relative merits of Carol's submission, I would have been sadly disappointed.
For what I read on Daily Kos last night was all too often little more than a collection of rants, mean-spirited personal attacks and claims that were often contradictory or simply incorrect. There seemed to be little evidence that many of the people commenting had even read all of Carol's submission.
If this is the best the blogging community can offer as a critique to a serious written submission, the future does not bode well for serious debate. Do bloggers such as Kos really expect to be taken seriously when they resort to comments such as these: "As for scatological references, here's another one: Darr is full of shit." When you have to resort to that level of debate, well, that is embarrassing.
There is much talk about how the MSM ignores facts, yet one comment happily claims that IPDI's funding by PEW shows that it is a front for politically conservative and evangelistic projects. One conversation with Carol would quickly dispel that notion, but that would require the person to act..well, like a journalist and check her facts.
I encourage everyone to read Carol's submission in its entirety and then seek out a rather more informed discussion of the potential impact these proposals mean for the blogging community.
Well, reading Daily Kos's attack on Carol Darr, the director of the Institute I work at, the future appears to be a rather more depressing one. Carol Darr submitted a detailed set of comments to the FEC regarding their plans to amend campaign finance regulations to include public communications via the Internet, including blogging. If I was looking for a serious analysis of the relative merits of Carol's submission, I would have been sadly disappointed.
For what I read on Daily Kos last night was all too often little more than a collection of rants, mean-spirited personal attacks and claims that were often contradictory or simply incorrect. There seemed to be little evidence that many of the people commenting had even read all of Carol's submission.
If this is the best the blogging community can offer as a critique to a serious written submission, the future does not bode well for serious debate. Do bloggers such as Kos really expect to be taken seriously when they resort to comments such as these: "As for scatological references, here's another one: Darr is full of shit." When you have to resort to that level of debate, well, that is embarrassing.
There is much talk about how the MSM ignores facts, yet one comment happily claims that IPDI's funding by PEW shows that it is a front for politically conservative and evangelistic projects. One conversation with Carol would quickly dispel that notion, but that would require the person to act..well, like a journalist and check her facts.
I encourage everyone to read Carol's submission in its entirety and then seek out a rather more informed discussion of the potential impact these proposals mean for the blogging community.
3 Comments:
Ted Turner lamented the coverage of the pervert of the day, and he's right. In what other era would anyone have cared to know the saga of Scott Peterson and Amber Fry?
Playing to the lowest common denominator is all too frequent nowadays, across all media. Kos is playing to a particular audience, and is doing so at the expense of civil debate and his own creditworthiness.
It doesn't bode well for the medium when its biggest names wallow on the fringes.
With an over abundance of information, often of dubious origin and accuracy, someone could really trade on the currency of news without the BS.
All too often, the lowest common denominator on the Internet is so far below even the lowest of the the low as far as the mainstream world is concerned. That's one of many reasons why I don't generally believe that the Internet will ever singlehandedly change for the better the state of political dialogue in this country--it's impossible for a medium built upon ranting and anonymity to attain the lofty ideals so many of us want it to.
Kos' handling of Darr's submission has been downright childish, and unreasonably so. You can almost taste how threatened he is by any regulation of the blogging community, and I can come to no other conclusion than selfish interest -- you know, the motivation he so often criticizes.
It's clear that some sort of regulation is inevitable, as Congress doesn't seem to benefit from an unchecked blogging community. Kos' reaction is not only disappointing in its lack of depth, but in its failure to make any concessions toward a middle ground. If the blogs don't want to help construct a happy balance of regulation and free speech, I'm afraid the result will fall much more toward the former.
Your point, however, that this bodes poorly for the future of blogging may be a little hasty. After all, there were comment threads on Daily Kos that praised Darr and corrected some of Kos' errors. Others that found some middle ground between what Kos was saying and what Darr was saying. I guess fruitful debate sometimes has to operate in an atmosphere dominated by the louder "full-of-shit" brand of argument.
Post a Comment
<< Home