New Media at its Finest

The new media, consisting of blogs and various i-reports, can be said to have made getting news a more personalized experience than it once was. We can "Like" certain people or institutions on Facebook and receive instant, up to the minute news stories from them. We can also "Follow" our favorite celebrities on Twitter and feel like we are actually part of their lives. The advent of blogs has given the average Joe a greater voice than 15 years ago. Information is much more accesible to the common person around the world and is getting much more accesible every year as internet connection proliferates around the globe.

These are all the advantages of new media. Accessible. Quick. Empowering. There is one story from the blog Daily Kos (among others in their archives) that serve as an example of an apparent disadvantage that social media provides. Here it is: The NRA response to the State of the Union: Only the NRA cares about the children. It is not bad that the Daily Kos has an opinion on a polemic debate in the country, in fact, a blog that is slanted either to the liberal or conservative side is the writers' own prerogative and is not inherently a bad thing. However, a side effect of, in this case, the Daily Kos's liberal bubble is that it can promote incendiary, hyperbolic language that often utilizes straw man arguments to criticize the other side of an issue. Take the first sentence for example, "Official NRA crazy person Wayne LaPierre..." To me at least, much of the substantive credibility of this article is thrown out the window by the first sentence alone when such language is used. I am no fan of the NRA myself, but I get turned off by a title like this. Obviously, Daily Kos is a well known liberal blog and it is expected that they would have harsh words for the NRA, but the first line rubs me, and I suspect many others, the wrong way. It makes the article seem like it came from the Onion. Blogs can be used to advance an opinion that old media would refuse to, but that does not mean that one must compromise journalistic principles to achieve that end. Blogs provide people who would never before be able to propagate their thoughts a chance to do just that, but with expanding power, comes just as much responsibility. Bloggers have a duty to uphold at least a modicum of integrity when crafting their words. Unless someone is physically or mentally abusing someone, bloggers should treat their opinions with some respect, even though the bloggers are not regulated as tightly as the mainstream media.

This criticism is not just confined to Daily Kos. Partisan blogs all over the internet employ these tactics as bait to lure readers. This puts liberals and conservatives in their own spheres of reality. My criticism is not so much of the specific blogs, (their main goal, after all, is to attract the most readers to their blog) but rather the phenomenon of blogs itself. I think the blog Talking Points Memo does a great job of trying to remedy the ill effects that are the byproducts of partisan blogs. Their writing looks professional and has articulate and analytical bloggers covering the main stories. If blogging wants to be a credible news medium, at least in my eyes, than it needs to stop painting partisans into corners.