Posted by Juan Non-Volokh:
"Digital Mob":
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_06_12-2005_06_18.shtml#1118850127
The folks at [1]Technology Review is upset that the "digital mob" is
too critical of the MSM and has claimed the careers of Dan Rather,
Eason Jordan, and Jeff Gannon.
Perhaps all three men deserved their fates; maybe the blogosphere
is to be applauded. But in each case, bloggers expressed an
unseemly triumph after they got their man. It�s hard to feel happy
when bloggers turn into a digital mob. Blogs are powerful, but
bloggers are rewarded for expressing extravagant opinions. And at
least for now, their postings are not subject to the processes
common for most stories produced by MSM: sober debate among
colleagues, followed by reporting, line editing, copyediting, legal
vetting, and fact checking.
What's curious about this is that the primary charge against the MSM
is that it does not involve as much "sober debate, . . . vetting, and
fact checking" as its defenders like to claim. Wasn't this precisely
the critique of Dan Rather? Doesn't the success of blogs demonstrate
that the MSM has lost much of the moral high ground upon which the
Technology Review critique is premised? These are hardly original
points, but many knee-jerk defenders still miss them. In my opinion,
if the MSM did a better job of the things that should distinguish it
from blogging, the "digital mob" would be much less of threat.
References
1. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/04/issue/readme_media.asp?p=1
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