Brittney has dubbed today Media Bias Thursday. Since I have been on a media kick anyway today I think it is a good time to share something I heard on a podcast the other day.
In Christopher Lydon’s first “Open Source” show on PRI (oh no more public radio!), he asserted that blogosphere succumbs to group-think when there is a hot controversy. Then Doc set him straight. Here is the exchange:
Lydon
“Bloggers run together; there is a kind of mob rule. Whether it is the left bloggers bringing down Trent Lott or right bloggers bringing down Dan Rather, there is a piranha tendency. beware bloggers when they get together”
Doc Searls
“I think those are big, obvious red herrings. It is too easy to project our usual prejudices on those because something big happened to the big media. I have seen so many more cases where if someone is being treated unfairly or doesn’t get something right they get corrected. The corrective nature of what goes on there is so much larger than any kind of ganging up.”
It is appearing that the change agent that blogosphere provides is a new level accountability. Hooray for blogosphere for giving us things like “Media Bias Thursday”.
