H -°, L 6° | Tomorrow: 
H 18°, L 6°I consider the growth of citizen journalism and the progressive blogosphere to be among the most important political developments in generations. This is why I am elated that a pillar of local Madison media, The Capital Times, has decided to take part in this information revolution by transitioning from print publishing to a 24/7 online model. This staple of Madison’s progressive media community will cease daily print publication by the end of the week, and I firmly believe that its impact on our great city could prove to be incalculable.
The Capital Times’ transition to a medium more conducive to spreading the truth over the roar of the right-wing noise machine is absolutely essential, as the vast majority of both print and broadcast mass media outlets have become highly susceptible to self-censorship in the increasingly corporatized environment in which they operate. Far too many newspapers and news channels have decided to privilege their stockholders’ interests over their readers’, and our democracy often finds itself drowning in a sea of propaganda.
Quite fortunately, the people have finally recognized the doublespeak. A recent Harris-interactive poll found that more than 54 percent of Americans say they tend not to trust the press, and a recent Harvard University study concluded “nearly two-thirds of Americans do not trust campaign coverage by the news media.”
The public has also discovered beltway media stars are far too insulated in their bubbles of self-serving pomposity to adequately meet the information needs of the average citizen, as evidenced by a Zogby poll showing 67 percent of Americans “believe traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news.” The poll found the public views citizen journalism (77 percent) and blogging (59 percent) as important for the future of journalism as well, statistics that perhaps caught the attention of The Capital Times.
New journalism media are on the rise, largely due to the massive disparity in the diversity of authors and opinions made available through the free-flowing nature of the Internet. Our mass media system currently acts as an echo chamber through its constant use and reuse of the same heterogeneous set of opinion makers, despite the fact that large numbers of these “experts” are consistently and abhorrently wrong.
The fact that there is almost never any accountability when members of the media are proven incorrect is a large reason why people have been driven to the Internet in search of actual experts who — for whatever reason — could not prosper inside the beltway. The progressive blogosphere is full of brilliant scholars who, in stark contrast to members of the mass media, have been demonstrably correct despite having varying degrees of journalistic training. However, the lack of training in the field is a minor concern compared to getting it wrong on the major events of the last few decades like so many of these “professional journalists” have.
This dynamic is why I vehemently contest the notion that we currently have a one-sided liberal mass media. Chris Bowers of Openleft.com recently wrote about this issue when analyzing demographic groups Democrats appeal to, noting they do not do well among “straight, Christian, non-union whites who are not single women, do not self-identify as liberal and are over the age of 30.” Mr. Bowers explained how “Republicans win this group with more than 70 percent of the vote” and “90 percent of the punditry falls into that category.”
The lack of mass media diversity relative to our population has been crippling to our democracy, as our public discourse is easily hijacked by exploiting the inherent biases typical of the demographic patterns of the punditocracy. In his new book “Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics,” constitutional lawyer-turned-blogger Glenn Greenwald dissects just how the right accomplished this and how it manifests itself in our democratic institutions:
“Our elections are dominated by the same tired personality script, trotted out over and over and over. Democrats and liberals — no matter how poor their upbringing, no matter how self-made they are, no matter how egalitarian their policies — are the freakish, out-of-touch elitists who despise the values of the Regular Americans. Right-wing leaders — no matter how extravagantly rich they are by virtue of other people’s money, no matter how insulated their lives are, no matter how indifferent their policies are to the vast rich/poor gap — are the normal, salt-of-the-earth Regular Folk. These petty, cliched storylines drown out every meaningful consideration and dictate our election outcomes, and they are deployed automatically.”
Our mass media system gives the farthest reaching and loudest microphones only to pundits who see the world through this corrupted political framework, and it is precisely how a war hero like John Kerry could so easily be depicted as less courageous and more elitist than a National Guard-deserting, billionaire oil tycoon like George W. Bush. Of course, The Capital Times has not been nearly as susceptible to such rancid tactics as the typical media outlet. I am hoping its transition to the Internet will amplify and enhance its capacity to speak truth to power, and I firmly believe Madison, and the nation as a whole, can greatly benefit from it.
Harry Waisbren ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in communication arts.
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Ahh “new speak”…. The Capital Times wasn’t loosing money and forced to become an online version to be save money, they are “taking part of the revolution” and leading it!
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John Kerry: a true “war hero.”
HAH!
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HA! The mass media was giving John Kerry a pass until the blogosphere did the hard work necessary to disclose John “Benedict” Kerry’s war record and his infamous Winter Soldier slanders of our military as atrocity committing monsters “razing villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan,” etc. ad nauseum.
We’re all still waiting for Kerry’s SF180 to fully disclose the Senator from Hanoi’s military records.
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Capital Times promoting the truth… that’s laughable… they merely found out that no one wanted to keep paying for their liberal rag
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Newsflash: It’s more typical for conservatives to distrust the media than liberals.
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Blogging uses “real” news outlets for their sources. Without real news, the echo chamber doesn’t work.
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“I vehemently contest the notion that we currently have a one-sided liberal mass media”
Wait, I thought you all were supposed to be “reality based”? This would indicate you are not.
“The lack of mass media diversity relative to our population has been crippling to our democracy”
You are right on this, but seem to ignore the fact that 93.732% of the reporters and editorial writers are Democrats.
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“Newsflash: It’s more typical for conservatives to distrust the media than liberals.”
Newsflash: It’s not, but conservatives just make a bigger deal about it. Something about white, Christian, middle-class males getting the short end of the stick in the country. Thanks Bill O.
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Harry - Great to hear from you again! You never fail to make me laugh! In keeping with the spirit of your thesis, I’m providing more Inconvenient Truths from the Blog-O-Sphere. This seems sooooooo timely, given the smarmy smugness of your ‘progressive media community’.
Here are a couple of articles addressing the discredited hypothesis of man-made global warming. Contrary to Al Gore’s assertions, the debate is not ‘over’….. but the acceptance of one-sided rhetoric and faulty analyses is! If the links don’t work, copy and paste into the browser address line. I’m liking this ‘Progressive Blog’ thing!
“Cosmic Rays and Climate” http://www.denmark.dk/en/menu/AboutDenmark/ScienceResearch/ResearchAreas/ClimateResearch/CosmicRaysAndClimate/
“Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.” http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm
“Temperature Monitors Report Wide Spread Global Cooling” http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Worldwide+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm
“Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate” http://www.heartland.org/article.cfm?artId=22835
I’ve been encountering more and more reports that oppose the popular view of global warming. Some of these authors were contributors to the UN Intergovernmental Climate Change reports who have seen their work edited, selectively used, and misused to support the false man-made global warming hypothesis. They are speaking out in increasing numbers to point out the errors and deceits in the UN-IPCC reports, Al Gores ‘An Incoherent Half-Truth”, etc.
“400 Prominent Scientists Dispute Man-Made Global Warming Claims” http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=bba2ebce-6d03-48e4-b83c-44fe321a34fa
My own experience with computer modeling, the fudgy nature of it, and even the inability of current computer weather models to predict the temperature next week within + 5F assures me that there is no way climatology models have any possibility of accurately predicting a ‘global mean temperature’ fifty or a hundred years from now.
JunkScience.com — The Real Inconvenient Truth: Greenhouse, global warming and some facts http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/
The Truth is Out There Scully!
Invictus Maneo
PS: If you want to reduce your ‘carbon footprints’, wipe your feet before you come in the house!
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This guy reminds me of a former Badger Herald columnist from 2003, sadly I forget his name. He too thought that corporate ownership of media means “conservative ownership.” Glad to see Ed Garvey’s idiocy has a place with the young…only someone like Ed would see 40 folks without jobs as “Progressive.”
And also, the Cap Times was the sole recipient of the welfare program operated by Capital Newspapers, taking the profits of the State Journal to keep itself alive. It’s fitting they and WKOW finally are chopping off the diseased limb.
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Blogging uses “real” news outlets for their sources.
Correct, the blogosphere is rife with stories pointing out the lies, ommisions and distortions of the Main Stream Media but there is also a fair amount of original data which didn’t make it through the MSM filtering process.
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George Bush isn’t a billionaire. He’d actually have to succeed at something to make that much money.
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Here’s hoping the on-line Capital Slimes is as successful as Air America Radio is….er… was…..uhmmm… never was. Now that is Progressive Politics progressing as God and the Laws of Nature intended!
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If it weren’t for the fact that the media has made BHO their darling, our fellow countrymen would have a clearer chance to see that Barack is the Obamination that he is. Look behind the props and the “life sized” cut-out that passes for a stalwart candidate, and beyond the media induced mass hysteria, and there lies the vacuum of substance & experience. His true agenda cannot stand in the light of day, for his is the snake oil of “change”, and he is the peddler of cures that do not begin to state the devices with which woes he will burden the people.
For the benefit of the country, Barrack HUSSEIN Obama is not an agent of change, he is an agent of demise to the United States of America. As the layers are peeled back, what will be revealed is his real agenda as an Enemy of the State.
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“If it weren’t for the fact that the media has made BHO their darling…”
Yes, that’s why they let John McBush get away with not knowing the difference between Iraq and Iran, or Sunnis and Shiites. And why they let him get away with saying that eliminating the federal gas tax will save Americans 20% every time they fill up their cars when the federal gas tax actually makes up less than 7% of the total cost of gasoline.
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OK lets go over this Fox News, conservative, CNN??, lets say their dead center, MSNBC, leans left (Keith Oberman, the farthest right they go is Joe Scarbro). News Papers? NYT and Washington Post? Left LA Times, owned by the Tribune but still no view since Lindsey Lohans cooche is more important then anything in DC. The Tribune, leans right, the WSJ leans right (and now is owned by Fox News). This crap about the media being left or right is just that crap. In the end it really balances out for the most part other then on talk radio. The only people to blame for that is the left for not making good talk radio.
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“but conservatives just make a bigger deal about it”
Yeah, perfect example was when BHO got asked questions he didn’t like by liberal Democrat reporters. Oh wait, it was the Obamamaniacs that went off the deep end on that.
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To Invictus Maneo
After looking at your sources for less than two minutes, I had already found elementary errors.
1) One study is from 2006 and a handful of studies have already been released that contradict the cosmic ray findings and point out flaws in the original.
2) One claims that 12 months of global cooling constitutes a reverse in the warming trend. Obviously, short term data can go up and down, but a trend is a long-term result.
3) Another uses data from one patch of ocean and labels it as decisive, despite the fact that sections of the ocean can warm while others are cooling and local environments can be quite variable.
4) There were a few instances where the author misinterpreted in mislabeled graphs in order to deceive.
I’m sorry, but if an undergrad without any formal training can spot these basic mistakes, you’re obviously not trying hard enough. If it’s just that you love being misled and thinking that thousands of scientists around the world have banded together to sabotage your way of life, I suggest seeing Expelled with Ben Stein.
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CNN??, lets say their dead center,
??? the Clinton News Network - dead center???
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“The only people to blame for that is the left for not making good talk radio.”
To make it sound obviously “left,” it has to sound painfully condescending (like Air America). NPR is left-leaning, but usually fair and factual.
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“they merely found out that no one wanted to keep paying for their liberal rag”
Actually, most newspapers are losing readership because their readers are all over 70 and dying. The most popular section in most papers is the obituaries page. I could tell you didn’t know what you were talking about because you seem to have trouble even finding the “shift” key.