In his Dec. 5 U.S. News & World Report column, Mort Zuckerman proclaims that blogs have become the “fifth estate.” In doing so, he at once elevates blogs while separating them from traditional media, known as the “fourth estate.”
Zuckerman writes:
Given the fact that the disseminators of blogs, such as Google, have a unique protection from legal liability for what is posted, the blogs often resort to blood sport in their commentaries on politics and life, with many repeating and reporting without fact checking. (Alas, the idea that Jews plotted the 9/11 attacks began as a blog and took hold in the Muslim world as fact; in fact, it was a lie put out by Hezbollah.)
This new age of journalism is challenging the “trustee model” of journalism, where journalistic professionals served as gatekeepers, filtering the defamatory and the false. Today, a large segment of the public believes the new media are flavoring their reporting so as to tell us not so much how the world works but how the media believe it ought to work. No wonder only 44 percent of the public now say they are very, or fairly, confident of the media’s accuracy.
The blogs, while fragmenting our mass audience and carrying many more inaccuracies than mainstream media, have nonetheless democratized journalism by giving citizens daily and immediate access to different opinions and, sometimes, to purveyors of truly expert knowledge…
The opinion blogs have, in effect, become a “fifth estate,” a barometer of attitudes not just in the United States but in the world. Now, we must learn how to make the most of a flow of fact and opinion unimaginable just a decade ago.
Interesting. Two comments:
1. Blogs are a supplement to, not separate from, the fourth estate; efforts by professional journalists like Zuckerman to keep the two from merging in the public’s mind will inevitably fail.
2. I had always associated the term “fifth estate” with the poor and working classes — which bloggers definitely do not represent.
(Via Romenesko)
Technorati tags: Journalism, Zuckerman, Blogs, Media
The Liberal Media’s So Darned Liberal, Even the Switchboard Operators Are Liberal
Media Orchard respects the political opinions of others. I’m no wild-eyed liberal; I’ve voted for members of both parties (as well as independents) in the past.
But there’s something about the nonstop “liberal media conspiracy” theorizing of certain right-wing pundits that makes me go nuts. It’s goofy stuff that I would normally find amusing — but then I realize that millions of people actually fall for this demagoguery, and I lose it.
Two recent conspiracy blogstorms involve the mysterious “X” that appeared over Dick Cheney’s face during a Nov. 22 CNN telecast, and the Photoshop bedevilment of Condi Rice by USA Today on Oct. 19.
This evening, Matt Drudge has the following late-breaking development in the CNN conspiracy:
Listen to a full tape of the call here.
Obviously, the switchboard operator was in that all-employee meeting where Jonathan Klein revealed the true meaning of the Cheney “X.” I can’t believe his loose lips!
Thank goodness they fired him before he could start telling everyone about the secret handshake.
Technorati tags: Journalism, Drudge, Cheney, CNN, Conspiracies, Blogstorms, Dick Cheney