There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing’. Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog’s one defense. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general.
For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel-a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance-and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle; these last lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes; and without insisting on a rigid classification, we may, without too much fear of contradiction, say that, in this sense, Dante belongs to the first category, Shakespeare to the second; Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Proust are, in varying degrees, hedgehogs; Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Molière, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzak, Joyce are foxes.
– Isaiah Berlin “The Hedgehog and the Fox“
Harry Brighouse Henry Farrell [how in the world did I blow this one?], over at Crooked Timber weighs in critically on the blogs vs media arguments, which he characterizes as
The perennial issue of mainstream media bias and the superiority of blogs is undergoing a minor revival in the right wing blogosphere at the moment, much of it centered on a column by Nick Coleman of the Star-Tribune, which has the temerity to take on PowerLine. Coleman’s effort to “fact-check” the factcheckers is rather weak, but his main point is hard to refute – it’s a bit rich for slavering right wing hacks to accuse the mainstream media of ideological bias and expect to get taken seriously.
No, it’s not, actually.
Here’s the interesting point that Harry and others who criticize the blogosphere by criticizing individual blogs consistently seem to miss.
Yes, Glen and Powerline and Talking Points Memo and – gasp – even Winds of Change have biases, gaps, and flaws.
The question isn’t whether individually – mano a mano – we’re better than journalists are. We’re not. Mostly we’re not because we do this part-time while we have full-time jobs elsewhere, and because we don’t have the resources and social capital (“Please take my call, I’m a blogger…”) that the traditional media do. It’s not that journalists are smarter; I continue to be impressed by the intelligence and span of knowledge of people I meet in the blogging community.
And just go look below, or at my review of columns in the L.A. Times to ask whether there really is some slant in the mainstream media.
Skipping over Harry’s inflammatory “slavering right wing hacks” for the moment, let’s go looking for substance…
On which, see further Matt Welch’s entertaining takedown of Hugh Hewitt. There’s a curious sort of doublethink going on here, which culminates in a sort of dodge-the-responsibility two-step. On the one hand, bloggers like Glenn Reynolds respond to their critics by saying that they can’t cover everything, and that they’re not providing a news service, only opinions. On the other hand, they seem to believe that blogs should radically change or replace the mainstream media. Either of these statements is reasonable enough on its own,1 but taken in conjunction, they’re pretty jarring. If you think that blogs should replace the mainstream media, then you should be prepared yourself to live up to some minimal standards of scrupulosity, intellectual honesty, and willingness to deal fairly with facts that are uncomfortable for your own ideological position. You should be prepared to live up yourself to the standards that you demand of others. Exercising the “shucks, I’m just a little old blogger” get-out clause is rank hypocrisy when you want the blogosphere to devour the New York Times whole. Funny that Reynolds et al. don’t see it that way.
No, I think it’s that Harry misses the point, and it’s the same point missed in a party conversation a long time ago:
In the discussion, I had substantive issues with his points, which were essentially that journalism is superior to blogging because it has an editorial process which drives it toward ‘fairness’ (he felt that objectivity was impossible and not necessarily even desirable), but a fairness informed by the moral sensibilities of the institution (I’m pulling a short argument out of a long and somewhat rambling discussion). Bloggers obviously don’t.
I tried to make the suggestion to him that individual blogs weren’t necessarily good at driving toward fairness, but that the complex of blogs – the dialog and interaction between blogs – was, and might in fact be better than mainstream media, isolated as they are from feedback. (Note that Perry from Samizdata got this point before I finished the sentence).
That’s still the issue. It’s not whether Glenn Reynolds is more accurate at describing events than the New York Times, it’s about the notion that the complex of blogs – from Kos to LGF via Crooked Timber and Diplomad – is better at describing events.
If you’re just reading Winds of Change, you’re making a horrible mistake. One of the things that worries me about sites like Kos and LGF is the idea that the communities there are so big and active that many folks might just stay there – after all, it’s ideologically comfy for them (either because they agree with the framing beliefs of the site or because they reject them and get pleasure from looking at all the idiots who disagree with them).
The strength of the blogs is the strength of the fox; we know many things and among ourselves don’t try to tie them into one overarching narrative. The reader gets to do that.
Actually, think Seurat. The dots become colors and then images. It’s up to you – the reader – to look at enough of them to assemble those images.
UPDATE: The American philosopher William James also had a quote worth reading on the great vs. the small. Joe had a Dec. 31 recent post discussing Why 2004 Was The Year of the Blog, and Tim Oren follows up with a VC/strategist’s analysis of blog strengths, media weaknesses, and potential opportunities in Citizens’ Media in 2005: A Year to Dream Big.
Harry Brighouse shouldn’t be taking the flak for this post – it’s mine (since we have similar names and contribute to the same blog, we commonly get mixed up; usually to my benefit). While I’d like to believe, as you argue, that the varied ideological hues of the blogosphere can combine to provide some sort of harmonious approximation of the truth, I think that this is based more in optimism than in fact – an awful lot of nonsense goes out into the blogosphere and stays there, on both the left and right sides of the spectrum. I certainly don’t believe that the blogosphere should be non-partisan – that would take a lot of the fun out of it – but I do think that political bloggers should have a much greater sense of individual responsibility for their blogging, a minimal commitment to honesty, and a willingness to confront awkward facts for their political positions (as Max Weber said a long time ago, there are awkward facts for all political positions worth holding).
The position that you’re advocating, if it’s taken to its logical extreme (I don’t think you’re saying this – but it’s not a far reach from your argument) implies that bloggers don’t need to exercise much in the way of individual responsibility for what they say, as the structures of the blogosphere, and the fact that readers should ideally be exposed to different viewpoints, will mean that all the distortions come out in the wash. At a minimum, we need more evidence to show that this is true – and much of the evidence that we have points in the opposite direction. How many readers are ideal readers of the sort that you describe? This more general question is something that I used to be more optimistic on, believing that the habit of bloggers to link to the people who they were rudely criticizing provided some minimal control and cross-fertilization of ideological viewpoints, regardless of spin and snark. But then I read a post by Mark Kleiman (I can’t find it right now; hence lack of link and specificity) suggesting that when Glenn Reynolds links to something on Kleiman’s blog, only a tiny fraction (1%??) of people follow the link through.
The long and the short of it is that I think that bloggers ought to have some minimal standards of _individual_ behaviour. Relying on the reader to put things together, or the structures of the blogosphere to miraculously divine truth from chaos seems to me to be at the least wishful thinking, and in the case of some bloggers, an excuse for ducking the fact that they purvey partiality, distortions and downright untruths as part of their daily output. Bloggers should pay more attention to the 2×4 in their own eye before plucking motes from the eyes of their brothers in the media. There’s a strong tendency towards self-congratulation in the blogosphere (which is not to say that blogs don’t have a fair amount to congratulate themselves over – it’s a lively, vigorous medium) – and not very much self-criticism.
Henry,
I would agree that bloggers should hold themselves and each other to some kind of standards, that rudeness, lying, and intentional half-truths are undesireable and ought to be socially unacceptable.
But I’d say the same thing about MSM op-ed pages, too, and frankly, I can’t say that, say, the NYT editorial page has much higher standards in this regard than WoC. Rather lower (this is the page that publishes Krugman and Dowd), actually, and without comments (letters selected for publication just don’t compare) to call them to account.
Henry, I think it’s simpler than you make it out to be.
Good systems are designed to allow imperfection; the American political system as a good example.
Bad systems are designed to require extraordinary levels of rigor and perfection, which are tyoically hard to maintain.
Do I think bloggers should behave better, be more tolerant, more aggressive at weeding oiut their own errors and biases? Of course. But, last time I checked, they were human.
As are journalists. But the nature of the journalistic enterprise as pricticed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries give a lot of latitude to journalists who make errors that are consitent with the monoculture of the journalistic community – which is predominantly urbane, educated, and shares a number of cultural and political points of view.
And that latitude is checked by the self-procaimed ‘rigor’ of the journalistic process – which I think has been shown to be relatively unrigorous.
So we’re left trusting the journalists.
I’d rather (no pun intended) trust a well-designed system of check and balances.
A.L.
Regardless of the responsibility exercised by individual bloggers (I have some specific complaints), I find the idea that “the system” will magically produce Truth to be optimistic at best. This is especially the case because the American political blogosphere is largely divided into two camps, with only a small swath of readers that overlap. You can look it up–Valdis Krebs did a map some time ago. For all the complaining that people do about the blue/red divide, the blogosphere has only tended amplified the problem. It’s a bad system, too.
Armed, praktike– There is no design– it’s a self organizing system. It’s a social network undergoing constant evolution. How can either of you critique a design that isn’t there?
To borrow from Den Beste: the standard isn’t perfection, the standard is the alternative.
If the alternative to blogs plus MSM is MSM alone, then we’re better off with the former.
Blogs may not magically give us Truth, but a reader looking for it would do very well to check some blogs along with his CBS Evening News.
And I’m not sure, Praktike, that blogs have “amplified” the problem of the divide. I don’t get much in the way of liberal commentary from my subscription to National Review, but I do get a fair number of links to liberal sites from The Corner.
And I think I once convinced Andrew Lazarus of something, which would have been rather unlikely to occur except by the mediation of AL’s old blog.
It seems that some have an inherent distrust in the (I no it’s a cliche) marketplace of ideas (but how else to describe it?).
The thing with blogs is that there is no central authority. Shoot, there’s not even a single unfying principle. Anyone can start a blog for any reason. There’s no guarantee of quality. There’s also nothing for certain groups of bloggers to define a code of conduct and live by it IF THEY CHOOSE.
The blogging universe is too big to categorize. That’s the central falacy. There is no there, there. Any sentence the begins with “Blogs are…” is a self-refuting statement.
So, yes each reader lives in his on Blogosphere (another cliche?), constructed with trusted individual blogs. There are tools that could be developed to aid this by implementing “rings of trust” or “trust networks”. I’m sure these things will all come in due time as things evolve.
Of course, those people who are uncomfortable with the din will likely never be completely happy.
praktike, the issue isn’t some centrally planned ‘system’ vs. another variant, it’s the give and take that is produced by open dialog.
The ‘scientific method’ relies primarily on the reproduceability of results…i.e. the notion that lots of experiements will cancel – or display – error.
Similarly, the dialog (and yes, theree should be more of it) among readers and writers in and between blogs – as we’re doing here – is better on average than one person’s brilliant ideas standing alone.
A.L.
Er, it’s not as if before the mighty internet there was no dialogue. It was just slower and the marginal cost of publication and distribution was higher.
Mind you all, I’m not proposing any sort of change or anything. You go to the moveable type engine with the blogosphere you have, not the blogosphere you wish to have. All I’m saying is that there is a fair amount of silliness in Hewittian, Instapunditian, Powerlinian, and especially Simonian blogosphere triumphalism. It’s like a Pets.com reunion party! Consider me a skeptic. There’s plenty of chaff in the blogosphere, and I agree with Henry that plenty of it gets left on the table. To reiterate: I’m not saying we do anything about that, but I think we should understand the world as it is and not get too excited about what is, fundamentally, merely an acceleration of existing trends.
Henry,
“The long and the short of it is that I think that bloggers ought to have some minimal standards of individual behaviour.”
Of course they should. People in all circumstances should have some minimal standards of individual behavior. What an earth shattering observation.
The problem is, while it’s certainly true that bloggers (being people) don’t correct errors and/or “take responsibility” perfectly, and the blogosphere (being comprised of people) doesn’t self-correct and remove errors perfectly, these things are no less true of the mainstream media. Arguably, the mainstream media is far, far worse at PRECISELY the things you complain about.
So what’s your point?
Glenn Reynolds has a bias? Duh. He admits as much. When Glenn Reynolds links to a dissenting view which not everyone clicks on it? Oh heavens me!
Are you applying these same standards to Dan Rather? If so, how does he score? If not, why not?
praktike – I don’t see Glenn as being a triumphalist, but you and I agree on so few things that I am not too surprised.
Some days when reading a wide variety of blogs, as I tend to do, I am reminded of an old Norman Spinrad novel “A World Between”.
Farrell: “If you think that blogs should replace the mainstream media, then you should be prepared yourself to live up to some minimal standards of scrupulosity, intellectual honesty, and willingness to deal fairly with facts that are uncomfortable for your own ideological position.”
There goes the pot again, complaining about black kettles.
I must have missed the VRWC meeting where everybody plotted to “replace the mainstream media” with blogs. I thought we were going to replace it with Fox News. I’ll be damned if I’m going to end up as an internet weatherman, or reporting on the local school board elections.
Like most MSM defenders, Farrell just can’t get his head wrapped around the problem of “media bias”. The problem is not the bias itself, but the fact that the bias is camouflaged by appeals to a false objectivity. Most bloggers dispense with the shoddy disguise, and ought not to be criticized for doing so. And those “minimal standards” of the MSM are often so minimal as to be negligible. Even when they follow standards, the standards include a lot of reliance on things like anonymous sources – sources that are supposedly credible because we are supposed to trust the reporters and editors that judge them to be credible, sight unseen.
That trust on which so much media crediblity has come to depend is badly, badly damaged. It wasn’t the blogs who did it, and it wasn’t talk radio, either. Long before those things came along, it was glaringly obvious to the public that the media was selective about the “facts” it reported, and that there was a lot of dishonest interpretation mixed with so-called reporting. Anybody who doesn’t agree can go argue with the ratings and the sagging circulation numbers.
It’s also absolute nonsense to say that a blog has to report all sides of an issue. This is relic of the MSM notion that the media consumer knows and believes only what he is told, and if he isn’t told “the other side of the story” he’ll never figure it out for himself. Unsound argument shall be refuted. Think of what Emmanuel Lasker said about chess: “On the chessboard, lies and hypocrisy do not survive long.” That’s because the other guy gets to move, too.
praktike: “there is a fair amount of silliness in Hewittian, Instapunditian, Powerlinian, and especially Simonian blogosphere triumphalism.”
Well, I hope their criticism of CBS doesn’t produce more Osama bin Ladens. But I wouldn’t sweat it – only losers worry about triumphalism.
praktike –
“You go to the moveable type engine with the blogosphere you have, not the blogosphere you wish to have. That’s freakin’ brilliant – I’m having a sampler made…
…but I’ll disagree on the issue of dialog. The Internet has made it possible for a middle-class consultant in L.A. (me) to have dialog with people close t othe front of their fields in a number of areas of mutual interest. That flat would not have happened before.
Patterico challenges the L.A. Times and gets them to run a story – wouldn’t have happened if he’d just written angry, unpublished, letters to the editor.
It’s not that blogs change everything – they don’t. But neither do things stay the same.
We’re all engaged in the act of figuring out what changes and what doesn’t.
A.L.
praktike, how did Valdis make his social network diagram? Did he just arbitrarily decide who was red and who was blue? Did he poll the nodes?
A more meaningful social network diagram would get a data feed from connections that tract the movement of information, opinion and influence. For example, i have just started reading Matt Ynglesias again– how would Valdis’ map know that?
In 1968 the Big Three in Detroit sneered at Toyota for selling “Jap tin” while selling third rate quality by the pound. In 1990 Toyota introduced the Lexus which immediately set the standard for quality in the lux car market. In 2005 they’re still making cars in Detroit but who calls them the “Big Three” anymore?
The MSM isn’t going anywhere (although their economic clout is nothing like Detroit’s was) but there will be some major changes occuring that will happen in a lot less than 22 years. The sniveling by the MSM won’t stop but it won’t make any difference either. The reader and viewer will determine the quality of what is read and seen, just as they always have. And there is not a damn thing the j-school profs can do about it, for which we should all give thanks.
Re the comments on the Blogos making the rounds today on several sites re the implications of Rathergate and the MSM.
See this comment I just posted up over at LGF and on a story that the MSM is avoiding like the plague.
Joe, the brave American Patriot (Yes I know he’s Canadian. I just made him an Honorary American Patriot) at least is hosting a discussion. No one else is reporting on this:
http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006063.php
Ron Wright, Moderator
HSPIG Forums Site
http://www.hspig.org
*****
Now here’s one for ya. This is a story that the American people need to hear. The MSM is avoiding it like the Plague 🙂 Go figure!
Ron Wright
***
ANTHRAX VACCINE CAUSAL LINK FOR GULF WAR SYNDROME?
Dear Mr. Hartman, CBS 60 Minutes:
There is a major story now emerging in the Blogosphere (Blogos) that will dwarf Rathergate.
[…]
Col. Lacklen in your previous story segment may be a victim of the military’s covert experimental anthrax vaccine program.
This story has been percolating along on many fronts for several years
[…]
The MSM is sitting on the sidelines for fear of another Rathergate. Unfortunately the MSM and Rather don’t understand the Blogos well. […]
. . . a newly emerging medium to convey info and the news of the day. Imagine a vast neuro net of dendritic/synapses forging connections at an exponential rate with massive parallel processing power to bring to bare on research questions.
HSPIG has no hidden agenda other than protecting the interests of our men and women in uniform either now or in the past.
[…]
Our svs personnel have enough to do fighting this war without having to worry about, “covering their backs.”
[…]
The nexus-unifying link is Gary Matsumoto’s new book “Vaccine A.” If true and we believe the science is sound, demonstrates a casual link between the DOD’s anthrax vaccine program and Gulf War Syndrome.
[…]
Many HSPIG members as individuals are strong supporters of this administration’s strategic foreign policy in the WOT. The WOT on terror must be won at any cost.
[…]
. . . HSPIG has an interest in all things involving bioterrorism including bioweapon agents and defenses. HSPIG’s attention was drawn to Matsumoto’s book and is tracking this developing story.
[…]
HPSIG has interviewed Matsumoto and believes him to be credible. At first blush his book is well researched and the scientific evidence appears to be on firm ground. The DOD on the other hand has not answered many specific questions. Instead the DOD asked service personnel to “trust them.”
[…]
I understand why the MSM is reluctant to present a story that may appear to be an urban legend or great conspiracy. This story can be presented in a skeptical manner without the presenter/media taking a position.
[…]
. . . In short, the American people need to hear this story, the unspun facts, select who and what to give credibility, and then decide what truth is.
The danger of not reporting this story if true,
[…]
. . . [this] has resulted already in the death or disabling many people. This will continue to kill others if this flawed technology is extended into the civilian vaccine market.
[…]
.. . The story involves people motivated by normal human frailties of greed,
[…]
. . . As in most economic crimes just follow the money.
Here’s some links for further information:
Vaccine-A discussion board
http://www.vaccine-a.com
LA Times Article – NIH: Public Servant or Private Marketer?
http://www.hspig.org/ipw-web/bulletin/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1921
HSPIG Forums Site
http://www.hspig.org/ipw-web/bulletin/bb/index.php (index under vaccine)
HPSIG Forums Site
A synopsis of Matsumoto’s of the facts in his book – The War Within: The Anthrax Vaccine Story
http://www.hspig.org/ipw-web/bulletin/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1864
Winds of Change (Blog) ongoing discussion on, “Vaccine A”
http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006063.php
Air Guard Pilots site that refused to take vaccine and resigned. (Note: 80% of our fighter pilots are in guard wings. As many as 50% of pilots in these wings have resigned. This is directl impairing/impeding military mission readiness.)
http://www.milvacs.org/tiger.cfm
Operational Risk Management (ORM) – Anthrax Vaccine (AVIP)
http://www.hspig.org/ipw-web/bulletin/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1926
Full OP-ED piece on HSPIG’s forums site:
http://www.hspig.org/ipw-web/bulletin/bb/viewtopic.php?t=2056
random notes on the blogosphere / political discussion
excerpt:
Offhand, I would not say the blogosphere is doing a great job of forcing people to confront facts they’d prefer not to confront, and vice-versa. I think the mainstream media is doing a terrible job. But I think Powerline is doing an even worse job than the mainstream media. Suppose Powerline were head of CBS news. How would the nation’s governance improve in any way? How would the nation’s governance *change* in any way, besides being even more right-wing? (“conservative” is not the right word, when you’re running a 600 billion dollar deficit and want to make it even larger)
“he job of a political press is to get all participants to argue from the same set of facts”
That’s a load of crap and precisely the type of arrogant, priesthoodesque nonsense that ticks me off about the mainstream media: They get to decide, proscribe, and circumscribe what facts we all look at and are allowed to ‘argue from’! Give me a break.
“It looks like you’ve come to visit this unfamiliar City to learn more about the world you live in.”
bq. “Yes.”
“Welcome!”
bq. “Thanks.”
“I must warn you, though–do not attempt to walk the streets alone and strike up conversations with strangers. It’s very bad for your intellectual health! Some of them misrepresent the facts. Others omit key information. Still others have distateful biases; axes to grind. Standard of honesty are low!”
bq. “Oh, my! Well–what should I do, then?”
“Stick to the tours offered by credentialled organizations. You can avoid sullying yourself by sticking to their pre-planned trips. Some even offer tape-recorded commentary to accompany your excursions!”
bq. “Oh. Say, what’s the meaning of these credentials you describe? But never mind that for now–first, what are your credentials in this regard; who are you?”
“Me? Why, to you, I’m just another stranger. Of course.”
.
… Quite a peculiar conversation.
AMac, bravo!
Armed, i think you worry too much. To a great extent the blogverse polices itself. Isn’t fact checking an emergent behavior here?
Roublen Vesseau says that the blogosphere is doing a poor job of “forcing people to confront facts they’d prefer not to confront” and illustrates his point by asserting that conservatives (apparently with no help at all from big-spending liberals in congress) are “running a 600 billion dollar deficit and want to make it even larger”. The figure is grossly exaggerated. Last spring’s estimates of a $521B deficit turned out to be exaggerated, and the latest figures I have been able to find (only 2 weeks old, here) give the federal deficit as $421B for 2004, around $350B estimated for 2005. The deficit is nowhere near $600B, and is apparently (or at least plausibly) shrinking, not growing.
Vesseau should not blame the blogosphere if it fails to force people to confront “facts” such as his.
You’re correct in your assessment that Republicans had quite a bit of help from Democrats in running up federal spending. Prior to Jeffords defection which threw control of the Senate into Democratic hands overall discretionary spending (including defense) was going up at about 4 percent. After the defection, non-defense/homeland security discretionary spending went up by double-digits (although some of this can be attributed to relief efforts for 9/11). After the mid-term election, Senate Democrats were successful in using the filibuster to get higher levels of spending such as the Medicare prescription drug benefit which went from about $130 Billion to $300 Billion to eventually $534 Billion and even then their alternative proposal was estimated to cost $700 to $900 Billion! Which pretty much disproves the “divided government” meme that Kerry apologists threw around to get Rinos to support a Democrat POTUS and GOP Congress.
This does not of course absolve Republicans for their complicity in the spending but it does point out the fact that much of it either (a) came from “divided government” and (b) caving by Republicans to Democrats on their legislative priorities. Since the last election and with increased GOP majorities in the House and Senate (thereby weakening the Democrats power to filibuster), this seems to have changed as Congress and the POTUS seem to (finally) be restraining spending and the good news that came out this week about proposals to change the COLA formula for Social Security holds some real promise for reducing the long-term unfunded liabilities of the program and control spending.
Sorry, I misquoted my source so as to slightly weaken my case. The linked figure for the 2004 deficit is not $421B but $412B, so Vesseau’s $600B is very nearly a 50% overstatement.
praktike – _Er, it’s not as if before the mighty internet there was no dialogue. It was just slower and the marginal cost of publication and distribution was higher._
You’re absolutely right. However:
It’s not as if before the mighty airline industry there was no intercontinental travel. It was just slower and relatively costlier.
Or how about:
It’s not as if before the mighty 747 there was no commercial flight. It was just slower and the marginal costs of maintaining an airport were higher.
I agree with you, in principle, that the internet only allows us to do things we could already do, except we can now do them much faster, cheaper, and to a much wider audience than before. _This does not make it less significant._ Discussion has crossed a sort of specific heat boundary. Students in Iran and aspiring politicians in Iraq can get to know a lawyer in Tennessee without having to leave their homes. This is a very significant development, but in theory they could have done the same with telephones or even snail-mail. The internet provides them with much better tools for finding each other, _but this is not as significant as the fact that a software developer in Georgia, a nurse in Wisconsin, and an engineer in California can listen in on the conversation, offering corrections, advice, and additional information relevant to the topics at hand._
While some bloggers do like to overstate their importance and the importance of the blogosphere in general, I _don’t_ think Instapundit is one of them. He seems quite modest, usually, and quite realistic with his expectations for the blogosphere.
Dr. Weevil, I have three words for you: Social Security Surplus.
I have one word for you: Huh?
What does the Social Security Surplus have to do with saying that the deficit (not further defined) is $600B and rising? If you want to say that the official or apparent deficit understates the extent of the problem, you have to say so, or at least add some clarifying word like ‘structural’. Vesseau didn’t — he just gave as fact something that is not so, while talking about the importance of facing facts.
If his numbers had been even further off — by 500% or 5000% instead of 50% — I might have thought he was making some kind of metablogular joke criticizing the inaccuracy of bloggers in general by exemplifying it. Not that that would have proved anything about anyone else’s inaccuracy . . . .
On the other hand, they seem to believe that blogs should radically change or replace the mainstream media.
Did you read Instapundit’s response to Mr. Farrell’s claim? I’d provide the link, but my browser won’t display the page. (No, really, I’m not fibbing.)
Also, as a blog addict, I vist many of ’em each day, and I’ve not seen any “reputable” or “serious” bloggers, such as Instapundit, express a desire to replace the MSM.
As a journalist, I like the idea that blogs could affect the manner in which the MSM performs its job. The fact-checking aspect of the blogosphere tickles me pink.
AMac, I liked that so much I quoted it. Thanks.
Frankly, I find the notion of eliminating “bias” in the blogosphere to be a waste of time. The moment you hold an opinion, you’re going to be accused of bias – one way or another. Free thought can not be constrained by worrying about other people’s opinions. That is the holy grail of political correctness – a concept which time has come, and gone.
Journalists who report the news are similarly biased. For the longest time, we – the people – have entrusted the reportage and analysis of news to journalists, assuming that the news was immutable, and thus negates the journalist’s own opinion. Unfortunately, it is perfectly clear now that news can still be interpreted, ignored, or overstated in a way that supports a specific political bent – if not in one single article, then over a series of articles, or even the complete absence of articles. The LA Times not reporting the Swift Vets story for such a long time, for example, was not a lie, it was a tactical ommission.
It’s only when bias is hidden that it becomes a substantial problem. Pretending to be unbiased when you’re not is deception. Since moral, ethical, and politcal bias is an essential part of healthy debate (unless you like debating about things where you agree with your opponent), I suggest we openly celebrate it, instead of trying to elliminate it. At a minimum, let’s stop obesessing with biased opinion on a blog-by-blog basis, and obsess with balanced opinion instead – across the blogosphere.
Very good presentation of a well-worn subject.
Recovering Liberal – you’ve given me hope that not all is lost in the ‘old’ media. Thanks.
Just and FYI (because I got called on this once), Mano a mano is Spanish for “hand to hand.”
You incorrectly use it to mean “man to man.”
Sorry to nit pick.
Otherwise great read.
The problem with the blog-o-sphere is that it is a loose cannon on the progressive MSM deck. The MSM and their fellow progressives within the bolg-o-sphere keep trying to tie them down.
Progressives are losing their entitlement of monopolistic control of media. Farrel and Coleman are scrambling (ululuating?) to save their high station they see as a birthright. This is no different than a teenager whining about the unfairness of doing chores.
Evil Man – Mano a mano is Spanish for “hand to hand.”
Does anybody remember when Michael Dukakis said “I want to go mano a mano with the American people”? I sure hope that guy never tries out his Spanish skills at a bar in Tiajuana.
couple of core reasons that the MSM cannot out fox the Blogs.
1) MSM are not ‘expert’ in anything. Oh they have gone to college. But can they explain a vision of the universe like Carl Sagan could (God rest his soul.)? Or the difference in the ‘th’ from Word vs a 70’s typewriter? No.
Ironically many of the people that post blogs are experts in their respective fields. A very narrow but very deep knowledge but you wade in at your own peril if you do not heed their observations. I will say ‘Dan Rather’ an go no further on that score.
2) Collective Mind. No single blog can provide the expansive breadth as most are individuals or small groups. But that is not the problem as the nature of RSS feeds and cross posting makes it possible for readers to glean the best (and the worst if they wish) from many voices. Pull wheat from the chaff and formulate thier own opinion.
From MSM you may get a smattering of different voices. But they are filtered thru a oligarical review board. The view is contained and selective.
3) MSM is constrained. Even vast networks like Hearst and CBS has fiscal limits to what they can cover. Out of a 100 good stories a day, only maybe 10 see the light of day. Who is to say that the one that hit the cutting room floor was not the seminial event of the century, such is history.
If one were to acess the total blog content pumped out daily it would exceed by far the content of the majority of MSM product. Volume does not make it good. But the ability of thousands of people providing 1st person accounts has to be superior to third party detached spun stories from distant writers.
I could go on an on, but technology (the blog) is leaving MSM behind. MSM will never disappear as we need professionals that can cover events. But MSM has run off the racetrack and needs to refocus on what is important. The vid E! is not journalism but a self serving pump up for Hollywood. The journalists need to get away from reading the political parties press releases and providing it as news. Another words they need to get up off their asses and dig for what is a real story.
Evil_dave – Sí, entiendo…
Actually, I meant it as ‘hand to hand,’ as in ‘duking it out’…
A.L.
We need both worlds. We need the MSM for the resources they can bring to bear. The MSM needs the blogosphere to keep it on the tracks. Once the MSM learns how to incorporate blogs into their structure, both will benefit. Right now the MSM is too defensive and scared. They need to relax and go with the flow. They need to adapt, not go away.
Any one who claims Roger Simon, Hugh Hewitt , Powerline or Glenn Reynolds are triumphalists obviously has spent near zero time reading those respective blogs. I read each and many others daily, because I appreciate the unique perspectives they bring, not so I can join in some group high five!
Well said, Abu Qa’Qa (#37).
I would add that finding out that some journalists and bloggers dislike certain popular bloggers of a different political orientation is hardly surprising. If some journalists fear that aggregate readership trends are becoming less favorable to them, and in some cases may come to threaten their livelihoods–well, those seem like pretty well-founded concerns.
Some of us–perhaps especially those of us already navigating tumultuous economic changes in our own spheres–don’t have much sympathy for the presumptious attitude displayed by some journalists and their sympathizers. Our reading habits are disrupting their professional security or political programs.
So, in this special case, it’s the customers rather than the providers who are at fault? First Amendment be damned? We are the ones who must change behavior?
As desirable as it is likely.
Sir Isaiah Berlin, one of Britain’s last great “public intellectuals”, promoted the hedgehog vs. fox analogy in a classic essay composed in 1950s: As was said of Reagan, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows ONE BIG THING.” Think of it as “bottom-up” vs. “structured top-down”… my feeling is, that critics of the Blogosphere have more than an MSM ax to grind– their goals are, as Berlin says, less to suppress than to dominate discussion, to corner “the market of ideas”. Rather than defend the indefensible, they sidetrack free debate by proclaiming themselves its moderators.
As usual, classic (read, genuine) Liberal perspectives descend from the Greek agora. For perspective, see Muller’s “The Mind and the Market” (Knopf, 2002) plus Jacques Barzun’s magisterial “Dawn to Decadence” (c.1998). Here, the Blogosphere follows in a great tradition (we could write a book). Foxes or hedgehogs, let the debate proceed!
“Gormless” (as in “twit”: Mark Steyn) academics, journalists [sic], politicians of retro-lib persuasion may profess dismay at we benighted bloggers’ failure to mount credentials. But, hey!– who granted Socrates a PhD? Were Carnegie or Rockefeller hamstrung without MBAs? Imagine Edison’s potential, had he attended MIT! Spare us! In thirty years, we’ll have the robo-sphere to deal with, but in the meantime, Bloggers’ll just have to muddle through.
Great posts everyone.
I think Glenn Wishard strikes the nail on the head with this statement:
“Like most MSM defenders, Farrell just can’t get his head wrapped around the problem of “media bias”. The problem is not the bias itself, but the fact that the bias is camouflaged by appeals to a false objectivity. Most bloggers dispense with the shoddy disguise, and ought not to be criticized for doing so.”
“False objectivity” is the problem, and the issue is not replacement of the MSM by bloggers, but the trustworthiness of the source. Trustworthiness requires that the producer reveal the contents of the product. The MSM have shown themselves to not be trustworthy to 1/2 of the population. That’s a gross error.
Okrent’s open declaration that the NYT is liberal is the most honest thing an MSM outlet published all year. Now, if each journalist at the NYT would do the same, and then write honestly from a liberal perspective, we would all be better off.
Bloggers, by definition, are “honest” in so far as they reveal their biases. Ironically, Hugh Hewitt and Powerline are more “honest” because you always know they’re coming from a conservative perspective, whereas Instapundit occassionally comes close to equivocating because he’s trying too hard to maintain an “objective” stance.
I will read a self-announced liberal or conservative blog any day over even the best MSM journalist. The latter is dishonest by definition because his institution has an agenda that he subscribes to in order to work there. As a case in point, look at the pre-Brooks NYT.
I think the metaphore is more:
bq. The foxy MSM are suddenly realizing they’re living in a world filled with thousands of hedgehogs armed with blogs.”
Individual bloggers–to greater or lesser degree–do have unified views of the world. Their idiosyncratic views sometimes match up pretty well with those held by others and can create an apparent ground swell of a particular point of view. Arguably, the same has happened in the MSM, with a regression toward a mean that is to the left of the current American population.
But there are so many more voices coming from blogs that one has to make a pretty concerted effort to read only one side of an issue. That is not the case with the MSM. With a single, shared world view, the MSM is far more limited in its ability to cover the world than a multitude of bloggers.
There are many bloggers with far more expertise and knowledge in their professions–as narrowly sliced as they may be–than almost any journalist could claim. That is true valued-added.
MSM still has a role to play, if it chooses to do so. It has resources–though shrinking since media consolidation got started–that no blogger can individually equal. But with group-think running the show, the qualitative advantage of MSM is being squandered.
Praktike and others who persist in defending the MSM and ripping the Instapundits and PowerLines of the blogosphere never cease to amaze me. I *have* the blogosphere I want. I read 10 – 30 blogs daily and get most of my MSM news filtered through them. This is MY CHOICE. Most of my life I was a lefty liberal and I soaked up the MSM and took it as gospel. I still can’t avoid everything they are covering but I am getting so much more, and filtered through people whose biases are known to me and whose opinions I have come to greatly respect. My co-workers do not know who Instapundit, PowerLine, Roger Simon, LGF, etc., are. They also have not a clue about many issues and stories I am concerned with, but I am extremely familiar with their issues and opinions. I feel that I am exposed to both sides, while they, getting all their news from the MSM, are ignorant about so much it is mind-boggling.
What is really driving lefties nuts is not just our disparagement of the MSM, but the fact that center-right bloggers are read by all sides much more than are lefty bloggers. They are wailing about Glenn, Hugh, Roger, Charles, etc., as much out of envy as anything. It must have driven another bunch of them mad to see PowerLine named Best Blog of the Year by an icon of the MSM, Time Magazine (which I buy maybe twice a year now – my money is much better spent elsewhere).
Lastly, when I think of lefty bloggers, I think of defenders of terrorists who murdered and maimed American contractors. I think of defenders of all the anti-Americans in the world. I think of defenders of forged documents that are “fake but accurate.” I think of people who equate Bush with Hitler.
I have the blogosphere I want — and the Left lost me several years ago. They just continue to issue whining and seething complaints that justify my decision.
Henry,
You’re consistently missing the point. The problem isn’t that the MSM is solidly biased to the left. THe problem is that they lie about it.
What, precisely, does it mean to be a “fair” “news source”? Let me give you a semi-concrete example:
The “activist group” “Left-wing Fruitcakes Against Corporate Food” is holding a press conference where they’re talking about their latest study, which finds that McDonalds kills two million people a year. Is the following a “fair” question?
“This is the third study your group has released this decade. The previous two were shown to be horribly overblown. Why should we think this study is any better?”
How often do you hear a “fair” MSM reporter ask that kind of question at activist group press conferences? Ever?
Here’s two write ups of the press conference:
“LFACF held a press conference today where they announced that McDonalds is killing an estimated 2 million people a years with their fatty food.
[5 paragraphs of typical press blather]
Not everyone agrees. Steve Malloy, a “junk science crusader”, claimed that LFACF’s studies are always overblown, and we shouldn’t believe this one, either….”
or
“LFACF, a group that in the past has consistently released studies that turned out to be overblown, released a new study yesterday claiming that McDonalds kills 2 million people a year.
[Couple of paragraphs with history of LFACF’s previous ‘studies’, and how flawed they turned out to be]
[Normal press blather]”
Which of those reports is more “fair”? Which is more honest? Which is more valuable to a news consumer trying to quickly figure out what’s going on in the world?
Which are you more likely to get from the MSM, and which are you more likely to get from the blogsphere?
“Fairness” is bullshit. What I, and I think most people, want from news sources is honesty. Every human being has political beliefs (your definitions of right and wrong, of fair and unfair, of good and bad, or, for that matter, of what’s newsworthy v. what isn’t, are all “political”). They shape how you see the world. Pretending that you don’t have them, or that you can “rise above them”, just marks you as being a liar. “He said, she said” isn’t good reporting, it’s a copout from someone too lazy, dishonest, or ignorant to do his job and find out what’s actually going on. But that’s what we get from the MSM, and that’s why the blogsphere is kicking their butts.
Glenn and Hugh are biased, but honest. CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, and CNN are biased AND dishonest. Which is why 2/3 + of Americans don’t believe them anymore.
BTW – here is how the WaPo is dealing with its tumbling circulation:
More here. MSM advocates are defending a steadily shrinking perimeter. The only really successful major newspaper is US Today, which is nothing but 75 cents worth of dead tree and colorful ink. Now everybody else wants to be like them.
As the quantity of real journalism has declined, so too has the quality. Papers are less and less dependent on trustworthy reporting, being more interested in glitz. So the blogs are not so much usurping as moving into a vacuum. Nature won’t abide those darn vacuums.
Over at my blog I cover a story that neither the blogs (WoC excepted) nor the MSM is covering.
The true nature of what is commonly refered to as “addiction”. I cover the science (much of it new in the last three years). It has a lot to do with how our ideas of right and wrong are formed. What is human nature. What can a man/woman be held accountable for. All based on how the brain works. There is a revolution on the way as this understanding becomes more generally known.
No expert in the field has effectively countered my assertions and some have told me that they think what I have found is central to fixing the problem. A researcher in the field even told me that he used my articles as a basis for suggesting possible profitable lines of further research.
The advantage of blogs is not their right/wrong view. It is the breadth of view points.
Google has helpped a lot with Blogger and the Google search engine. People with an interest in the subject find me.
BTW my central thesis is that what we call “addiction” is actually self medication for PTSD.
What I find most interesting is that a “lefty” came to my site and thanked me for getting the word out. He wondered why I as a “right winger” was championing a cause that is identified as “left”.
My simple answer: I follow the truth where ever it leads me.
I’d say that was more true of the “right” blogs than the “left”. Ideology can be a blinder. One must always have doubt. Even of one’s most cherished beliefs. Such doubt is what moved me from the communist/Democrat view point to the libertarian/right point of view.
So all I can say is: I could be wrong.
Show me.
#26 from praktike,
I have one word for you.
Lockbox.
LOL.