While the mainstream media will not collapse because of Rathergate, it will change because the scandal brought to light what has been happening in the last few years. The monolithic control of information by the large liberal outlets has been broken. While the big three networks and a few major publications still determine much of the national conversation, they have lost their iron grip, and the grip is slipping every day.
Peggy Noonan writes wonderfully (as usual) on this.
The Rathergate Report is a watershed event in American journalism not because it changes things on its own but because it makes unavoidably clear a change that has already occurred. And that is that the mainstream media's monopoly on information is over. That is, the monopoly enjoyed by three big networks, a half dozen big newspapers and a handful of weekly magazines from roughly 1950 to 2000 is done and gone, and something else is taking its place. That would be a media cacophony. But a cacophony in which the truth has a greater chance of making itself clearly heard.
She adds:
What broke it? We all know. Rush Limbaugh did, cable news did, the antimonolith journalists who rose with Reagan did, the internet did, technology did, talk radio did, Fox News did, the Washington Times did. When the people of America got options, they took them. Conservative arguments rose, and liberal hegemony fell.
All this has been said before but this can't be said enough: The biggest improvement in the flow of information in America in our lifetimes is that no single group controls the news anymore.
And this about bloggers:
Is there a difference between the bloggers and the MSM journalists? Yes. But it is not that they are untrained eccentrics home in their pajamas. (Half the writers for the Sunday New York Times are eccentrics home in their pajamas.) It is that they are independent and allowed to think their own thoughts. It is that they have autonomy and can assign themselves stories, and determine on their own the length and placement of stories. And it is that they are by and large as individuals more interesting than most MSM reporters.
Howard Fineman picks up this refrain, although from the whiney side the aisle. It is always refreshing when a member of the MSM is candid about bias. Fineman writes:
A political party is dying before our eyes - and I don't mean the Democrats. I'm talking about the "mainstream media," which is being destroyed by the opposition (or worse, the casual disdain) of George Bush's Republican Party; by competition from other news outlets (led by the internet and Fox's canny Roger Ailes); and by its own fraying journalistic standards.
He adds:
The crusades of Vietnam and Watergate seemed like a good idea at the time, even a noble one, not only to the press but perhaps to a majority of Americans. The problem was that, once the AMMP declared its existence by taking sides, there was no going back. A party was born.
In the world of information, the 00’s will be seen as a time of sea change, perhaps even the decade of the blog. But freedom available on the new platform, and new-found power that comes with recognition won’t create longterm credibility. That will come the old-fashioned way. We have to earn it. There are many voices now. How will new and growing audiences decide what they can believe in the blogosphere?
--James Jewell
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