Hiya, Theodore and PW!

Ted, welcome to the Lake.

PW thank you for Hosting this book salon.

Thanks, FDL. Greetings from sweltering Brooklyn!

Bev,
Thanks for the invitation. I look forward to the chat.

Ron

Ted,what type of research was required for this book, on a new type of media?

Haven’t read the book, so I hope you don’t mind entertaining general questions about the fall of the “old media” and the rise of the “new media”.

It seems to me that the Framers and the founding generation had a very specific Constitutional role in mind for the press in the United States. My strong opinion is that the mainstream corporate print and broadcast press has disgracefully abdicated this role, and bears a lot of responsibility for the fucked-up state of our nation.

On the other hand, it seems to me that the “Blue Media” you indentify–and blogs and other on-line text-based outlets–operates right in the heart of what the Framers envisioned as a vigorous press that would serve as an intellectual opposition to Government propaganda.

The mainstream corporate media and the Internet-based media see each other as “enemies”. Where do you see the balance between these two sources of information in the Pres election and over the next several years?

Something that seems to me to bind together “Blue Media” is the importance of sarcasm and wit to convey the message. Walter Cronkheit was known for his reliability, not wit. Perhaps we need to grow a structure of ostensibly blue commentators who are respected for solid, even stolid journalism.
R

Welcome.

I watch Jon Stewart, the ecumenical caller of BS, religiously.

Hey Theodore, welcome to firedoglake!

What gave you the idea originally to write New Blue Media?

It seems sometimes that Dan Froomkin and some of the folks at Media Matters (and blogs like FDL and Crooks & Liars) are about the only people practicing honest journalism these days.

I do exaggerate but not by much…

All of the new media are easily accessible via the Web. So mostly it involved lots of Googling and Lexis-Nexis searches. I’d been consuming much of the new media output prior to starting the book (in 2005)–so I had a good sense of what to look for. In some ways, I consider the book to be a “critic’s diary” of the left during the Bush years.

Welcome to FireDogLake, Ted, and thanks joining us to chat. Would you predict there will be a New Red Media should a Democrat be elected to the White House this fall, or will the Old Red Media reinvent itself on the Web?

I wouldn’t say that the old media have fallen–but I would say that the new media have undermined the dominance of the former. Bloggers are definitely asking the q’s that the mainstream media (MSM) are not. So too are Stewart and Colbert–and don’t overlook the Onion. As I show in the book, their coverage of the run-up to the war asked the questions not found on the front page of the New York Times.

I like the term “Old Red Media”–it sounds like The Masses and other Communist-influenced pubs. But yes, the old red media, or right-wing noise machine, would no doubt reassert itself if Obama wins. In general, the Republicans need to respond to the Dems’ dominance of new media politics. It won’t happen this year, because McCain is very much an old media guy. But Huckabee and Ron Paul showed that the Republicans will make use of the new media in the coming years.

Evidence the media is feeling the heat, from the New York Times today, in which Jonathan Alter criticizes the journalistic methods of Mayhill Fowler, who got two of this year’s biggest scoops:

“This makes it very difficult for the rest of us to do our jobs,” Jonathan Alter, a columnist and political reporter for Newsweek, said in an interview. “If you don’t have trust, you don’t get good stories. If someone comes along and uses deception to shatter that trust, she has hurt the very cause of a free flow of public information that she claims she wants to assist.”

“You identify yourself when you’re interviewing somebody,” Mr. Alter added. “It’s just a form of cheating not to.”

This is, of course, the opposite bookend to Timmeh Russert’s approach, that Village poohbahs are automatically off-the-record when talking to him, until he (Tim) asks specifically to go on-the-record.

Do you think bloggers will change, or have already changed, the insiders’ rules of journalism designed to “protect this clubby group of journalists and their high-ranking political subjects, and keep access to themselves,” as Jane Hamsher said in this same article?

The idea for the book originated during the Kerry campaign, when I watched Michael Moore, MoveOn, Air America, et al. join together. They were both supporting Kerry and confronting the right-wing noise machine. The problem, of course, was Kerry–who couldn’t make up his mind about the most important issue of the campaign, Iraq. At the same time, Kerry would not have even had a chance to win without the work that Moore, MoveOn and company did on his behalf. So I saw this group of new media creators as a powerful force to be reckoned with–as Obama’s success in winning over the netroots illustrates.

I think that the contrast between Alter and Hamsher’s comments is quite illustrative of the difference between the mainstream political media and the new media. As David Brock and Paul Waldman clearly show in Free Ride, John McCain utterly depends on his ability to spoon-feed journalists his line. So the independence and adversarial work of bloggers is very much a good thing. It makes politicians more accountable.

A great part of the success of this new media, I think, is humor.
One of the earliest and funniest sites, in my opinion, is Opinions You Should Have.
Thanks for being here today!

Hello, everyone! Had trouble getting in, but I’m here!

Glad to have Theodore Hamm here at the Lake!

How do you see “Red Media” re-inventing itself? It seems that so much of the right wing relies on top down talking points and very rarely does it seem that they do anything independently where it seem so much of the folks on the left have been forced to do things independently.

And the ability to do so with humor also seems to be missing from both the “Red Media” and the “traditional media.” What they perceive as “humorous” is more mean spirited. (Thinking of all the media types that have had to “apologize” this year for their lame attempts at so-called humor)

The mainstream corporate media and the Internet-based media see each other as “enemies”. Where do you see the balance between these two sources of information in the Pres election and over the next several years?

In the Main Street Vid (there is a vid within that vid from John Nichols), did you see O’Reilly’s attack dog go after Bill Moyers for lending credibility to a bunch of far-left loons (We The People)? The MSM propagandists are worried.

We have blue commenters, too, such as the great Thers!

Maybe instead of the next Edward R. Murrow, Keith Olbermann can become the next Walter Cronkite? In the book, I describe him as a combination of Michael Moore and Jon Stewart.

I’m glad you brought up Iraq, Theodore, because that’s the big dead stinky moose in the middle of the living room that the mainstream media still won’t address — because to address it would come too close to revealing just how much they acted as “complicit enablers”, to use Scott McClellan’s phrase, for Bush’s Iraq policy.

Also, in the NYT’s post-mortem today on the Democratic primary race, nowhere is it mentioned that a big reason for the support Obama got among the netroots and party activists was his early opposition to the Iraq war, as contrasted with Hillary’s not only voting for the AUMF, but refusing to admit — as John Edwards and even Dick Gephardt, two early war backers, had admitted — that she was wrong to do so.

Aloha, Theodore, welcome to the Lake!

Also, in the NYT’s post-mortem today on the Democratic primary race, nowhere is it mentioned that a big reason for the support Obama got among the netroots and party activists was his early opposition to the Iraq war, as contrasted with Hillary’s not only voting for the AUMF, but refusing to admit — as John Edwards and even Dick Gephardt, two early war backers, had admitted — that she was wrong to do so.

My intuition is that you are right about this. Do we have any polling information that supports this conclusion?

The right’s noise-machine does tend to operate in unison. But there’s nothing preventing right-wing bloggers to become a more powerful force–alas, the guy in Minnesota who’s been haranguing Al Franken may be a sign of things to come. As for humor, it’s not the currency of the right at the moment, but fans of Limbaugh, O’Reilly and company do find them entertaining.

Theodore,
Next time I see Keith I will tell him that he is the newly anointed Murrow. (He uses Murrow’s sign off.)

I love Keith but he is watched for his broadcast’s entertainment attributes, not its hard journalism. At least 20 minutes of his broadcast is devoted to less than important journalism (the worst person in the world really is Orally, but we all know that already.)

Olberman has the smarts and the guts to become a serious journalist who is honest, rather than “balanced”; but, MSNBC isn’t going to give up its money maker merely for the sake of integrity

But don’t you think that what you call ‘new media’ have really been the people more adept at using new tools to verify information, compare/contrast what a candidate says in DC with what they say in San Diego, etc, etc.

IF your answer is ‘yes’, then do you think that these kinds of ‘veracity tools’ or ‘truth-assessment tools’ are beginning to shape the way that reporters think about their stories?

FWIW: I actually do value reporting; but think that newsrooms as bureaucracies don’t fit the tools of the day. Just MHO.

I think PW can address the blogger in Minnesota better than I can but haven’t most of his allegations proven to be so much noise?

I mean, yeah, he pointed out that Franken had not paid taxes for certain states, thinking it was reciprocal agreements, but in the end didn’t he wind up coming out ahead and getting an overall refund?

You know that, and I know that, but what about the people (like a few I know) who pay as little attention to politics as possible because for them it’s one giant, toxic food fight.

How will they filter information?
That’s a key issue in a decentralized media environment.

I completely agree with you. Only one of the 12 insiders/experts even mentioned Iraq. And a separate article about the netroots’ influence in the Obama campaign made no mention of Iraq, either. What I do in the book is show that the netroots have not only been about medium, but about message. They have forced Dems (however imperfectly) to respond to the antiwar base. If he hadn’t opposed the war, Obama never would have won Iowa (or ultimately, the nomination). And Hillary essentially blamed her loss on MoveOn.

Sometimes it seems like satire and parody have been killed by the right. They do and say things so nuts and so ridiculously out to lunch that it used to be only satirists and parodists would do them. For awhile I worried that they were going to put them out of business.

But if in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king, then in the Land of the Bizarro Right Wing the satirist is a newsman.

seems like the lines between entertainment and reporting blur for both old and new media. olberman one example, trad broadcasting and print media as another, and fdl and ilk as a third. there’s as much entertainment and fun here as investigation. both really matter. maybe the blurring is related to the use of humor and other not-serious modalities?

The guy in Minnesota is Michael Brodkorb, and he’s a paid Republican Party of Minnesota operative. However, the local media seems at pains to avoid mentioning this, unless pressed to do so.

If he hadn’t opposed the war, Obama never would have won Iowa (or ultimately, the nomination).

As I said in my response to PW making this same point, my intuition is that this is correct. What is the evidence?

How do we get this new media to people like many I know in my area who don’t have computers, or if they do, don’t have high-speed connectivity?

But the Rush/O’Reilly lovers are so mean-spirited……they may find it ‘humorous’ but most of us don’t. I think we need to point out the meanness of their yuks. Frankly, I think, un-American.

Penn should read Phoenix Woman’s comment (#26). Hillary should have just said she was wrong. But she refused to do so–and started to beat the drums against Iran. So most folks in the antiwar base just didn’t trust her.

Go back and check the polling; that’s what I would do. Don’t have it to hand, but I seem to recall that this was what got the under-30 crowd behind Obama.

It’s rather ironic that the MSM continues to ignore Iraq, despite polls indicating we want more coverage…

The public wants more stories about the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people

When asked about the news coverage of the Iraq war, most (80%) say the coverage has been fair or poor. When respondents were asked to pick what coverage they would like to see more of, stories about the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people were the two most chosen (68% each), followed by stories about returning soldiers (58%), stories about how war has impacted communities here in the U.S. (57%),

and news about areas in Iraq where there is not regular conflict (56%). Casualty reports (32%) were the least chosen area of coverage.

Television, Web sites are the top destinations for news about impact

A third of all respondents (33%) say they learn about the impact of war at home through television, while 28% say they learn about it through Internet sites. Fewer (12%) say they learn about the impact of the war at home via newspaper or radio. Men (32%) are more likely than women (24%) to say they learn about the impact of war at home from Internet sites.Nearly all survey respondents, 90%, indicate they are active consumers of news.

Good question margot – internet access is cheaper and easier to access when not in the US (not to mentioned not spied upon) – do you see this as strictly bad business decisions or do you think that it is an attempt to keep new media away from the masses?

That’s true. In general, blogs are excellent media watchdogs. But most don’t have the resources to do actual reporting. Perhaps the Huff Post and others will change that in coming years.

Compare the US landmass to say, France.
Having said that, the Canadian gov’t put a ton of money into connectivity and their landmass is vast.

Keep an eye on NN, and also lobby for a better FCC (!)

As I say in the book, the “Bush gang’s antics often verged on satire.” But I think that both the Onion and especially Colbert have been quite effective in mocking the right.

i think it’s the result of a cooked market — control by the cable and phone companies, leading to bad service

I will never forget how eerily prophetic that January 2001 Onion article was. The only thing it missed was 9/11. Yet the mainstream media was all “ooh isn’t it lovely that we didn’t need to have tanks in the streets and that Gore avoided all that icky chaos by giving up? oh and ignore the people egging Bush’s motorcade…”

Alas, I don’t have concrete data to offer. I just don’t think Obama’s argument that he represented “change” would have held water if he hadn’t opposed the war that Hillary supported. This is especially true in caucus states, which bring out the activist base.

Not sure what to say–other than politics the old-fashioned way–i.e. out in the streets–still has its place!

After all this time, how can it be that some people still think Colbert is for real?

Those numbers are quite telling. They show why the MSM can’t be relied on to report the news–even if it’s about a 3 trillion dollar war that we’re currently waging. But it’s encouraging that the Internet audience is almost equal to the TV audience. Do the polls specify which sites?

Hello Mr. Hamm:
From a time standpoint MSM domonates by far over internet. Readership of MSM print as well. I see painful blow by blow exaspeartion expressed on the netroots that never get to American households.
The netroots forment critical thought while mainstream creates a spin of the news as it relates to their ownerships interest. How will that evolve if at all without the change in ownerchip?

But it’s encouraging that the Internet audience is almost equal to the TV audience.

You mean in general? Like, as many people use the Internet as their primary source of “news” as use the teevee?

If true, that is fucking great news!

Not sure how many of those folks exist, but I’m sure there are some. As PT Barnum said, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”

Hi Theodore… have to add your book to the summer reading list, definately in front of Scotty the Liar’s hagiography of self absorption and denial.

Question: you did much of your research, according to your comment above on-line. Was there a noticeable correlation between an increase in critical content and time, and who/where the content came from ie Comedy Central (Stewart/Colbert), HBO (Maher), Blogs etc…? Just curious because a lot of us bloggers in the avant-garde of what used to be “Bush Derangement Syndrome” and now affects what, like 65% of America, pretty much expected (hoped) everyone else might catch up…someday.

Thanks!

I think that she was trying too hard to show that she could be commander in chief…that she was strong enough to be just as war-like as men. She overdid it.

One wonderful thing about the new media is that unfamous people get to participate…ask questions….make comments…and feel part of the process…thus there’s greater interest. The younger people really get it. My nephew is in his 20s and VERY interested in politics and the state of the world.

Doesn’t Rep Lynn Westmoreland, the ten commandment guy, illustrate mmb’s point?

Some older people do not have computers. Some that do have them do not know how to use them. A lady told me that the internet is full of made-up stories. There is no one to verify anything that anyone says on the internet, therefore, it is all crap.

I did not realize how ironic her point of view is until just now. The same argument can be made of network news. Of course, network news verifies it’s own propaganda. Its all telling the same lies. It’s credibility is based on tradition and little else.

Unfortunately they don’t specify which sites, but, they did find this interesting factoid…

On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being not at all important and 5 being very important, how important to you is a diversity of viewpoints in the coverage of the war?
1 Not at all important 2%
2 2%
3 13%
4 22%
5 Very important 60%
Not sure 2%
Overall, a strong majority (82%) say it is important to have a diversity of viewpoints in the coverage of the war, with 60% saying it is very important. Four percent say having a diversity of viewpoints in the coverage of the war is not important, with 2% saying it is not at all important.

I’m obviously more sympathetic to independent media, but corporate control doesn’t always dictate the content. Stewart and Colbert are with Comedy Central/Viacom, and Olbermann is with MSNBC/GE. These folks, along with Michael Moore, Al Franken and others, have shown that there is a large commercial audience for left-leaning ideas. And corporations need to make money…

and if they did have computers and knew how to use them how much you want to bet that their bookmarks would be “Drudge” (he rules their universe), “Instapundit”, “Real Clear Politics” and Malkin and Hewitt. Probably Focus on the Family as well.

and Redstate.

It’s certainly true that the bloggers, et al., have been ahead of the curve. But things have gotten so bad with the war, the economy, etc., that it’s a wonder that Bush’s (low) approval ratings are as high as they are!

But then you have people like some local women I know, who get more leftist as they get older.
Hell, they can remember what it was like when people here could get good jobs with union benefits, they remember how revered FDR was in their parents’ homes, etc.
And I can’t send them these streaming videos and audios because they live in the sticks, and they can’t afford satellite internet.

All true. Rest assured that if Obama wins, Drudge & co. will be on the attack from day one. In general, the Republicans have some serious regrouping to do. They are short on compelling ideas and candidates. The next crop will make much better use of Internet organizing, though.

That’s a shame… DSL has too many limitations, and the infrastructure for broadband over copper exists, but the providers don’t want to spend money on it, it’s probably too small a market in total. What a shame that we don’t have a government that could do something about that.

Perhaps that will change after November. Proper incentives might get broadband everywhere… a nice thought.

You’re probably correct but I think I would still contend that the Republicans will somehow manage to take the wrong message from internet organizing.

They seem to concentrate on the marketing/message aspect of things rather than the actual substance of the internet and netroots organizing.

That’s a good point for the netroots to keep in mind. The Dems can’t afford to lose those voters–or more important, that perspective. There needs to be more alliances between unions and the new generation of activists.

Ted, welcome to the Lake.

PW thank you for hosting this book salon.

That’s true. They don’t want participation from below. But that will likely change.

Not to mention that the “authoritarian cargo cult” mentality does not do well in any organization that is not 100% “Top Down” in structure. I believe that they will try but are going to fail until they leave that mentality behind.

Or become Democrats. Not.

Did the MSM/legacy media learn nothing from the economy going south? Aren’t they learning now that as the economy goes south, so do their subsribers and advertisers?

NBC/GE might be doing just that…

Thanks.

Let’s hope so!

Thank you.

Ted, thank you for stopping by the Lake today and spending the afternoon with us.

PW thank you for Hosting today.

Everyone, this is a current and interesting book, the link is above.
Thanks

Re the NYT Clinton post mortem, it was pure horserace with no reference to issues. I caught part of one this evening on ABC News. It tracked Clinton’s campaign in terms of how friendly she was with her press entourag and whether or not she served the peach cobbler.

Re stories about the spike in oil prices, as fare as I could tell neither ABC nor NBC blamed them on hedge fund and investment bank speculation. Indeed what was really strange was ABC citing Goldman Sachs that oil would go to $150/bbl without pointing out that one of the prime speculators pushing the price of oil in that direction is, errr Goldman Sachs.

Any interest in speculating what the big newspaper dailies will look like in twenty years?

Thanks PW, Bev and all FDL folks for the excellent questions. I enjoyed corresponding with all of you. For details on my book, including reviews and upcoming events, please go to http://www.myspace.com/thenewbluemedia

Keep fighting the good fight!

That’s a shame… DSL has too many limitations, and the infrastructure for broadband over copper exists, but the providers don’t want to spend money on it, it’s probably too small a market in total.

The telecoms have received something like $200 billion in fees on customer bills which were supposed to be used to build a fiber optical network. They took the money but obviously never built the network. No one in government has asked for the money back.

Thank you Phoenix Woman and Mr. Hamm,
you deliver good news about the news.

Theodore, thanks so much for coming, and best of luck with your new book. Please come back and visit us again sometime!

I always mean to save the link for the article on telecoms keeping $200 billion in fees for a fiber network they didn’t build and so it takes me a few minutes to hunt up the link. There are actually several articles but I usually cite this one from Niemann Watc:

http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/…..thisid=186

Looking forward to reading the book.

I see MSM getting more irreverent in their commentary on people, places and things in trying to mimic the comedy satire shows and please the audience. Oy vey. This is exasperating and dangerous. They are being satirized for NOT taking things seriously enough.

Stewart, Olbermann, Colbert and Moore, etc. such BRAVE citizens. Colbert at Correspondent’s dinner… TRUTH TO POWER IN YOUR FACE!!! Wow.

But we need Moyers, Lehrer et al., Mark Shields, etc. Serious investigators and thoughtful truthsayers, too.

Mostly cable has focused on “politics” they are careful to say, NOT news. So the horserace gets the attention and titillates the audience with gossip and gotcha commentary. And if you want serious news … turn on the radio or track down cable BBC.

I hope to God the internet remains FREE and not enslaved to capitalist control. We need it for more thorough information.

Don’t miss the discussion of Why Hillary Lost at dailykos.com on Sunday — and the really great Q&A on what to say to someone who doesn’t ‘get’ Obama at mydd.com