From the Contributing Editor:
The rise of the “Pajamahadeen”
It would appear that we are witnessing a revolution of sorts in the way we get our news. The old mainstream media is used to being the big bull elephant and getting its way with the content. The New York Times unofficial motto seems to have become “all the news we see fit to print.” Many groups, but especially Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center, have documented the liberal bias present in the mainstream media in terms of what is covered and how it is covered. Now the big bull elephants are beset by pygmies, many, many pygmies with really sharp sticks, called ‘bloggers who are goading them to cover news they didn’t want to cover. Worse, these Lilliputians are highlighting every error and omission the mainstream commits. So, frustration in the mainstream media is mounting.
In the midst of the whole ‘Memo-gate’ scandal, while CBS and Dan Rather were trying to fix or spin the forged document problem away, a former CBS news executive took a shot at ‘bloggers. Jonathan Klein told Fox News that a ‘blogger is “a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas” writing & posting his opinions to the world wide web with no credentials and no desire to check his facts. Klein went on to insinuate that ‘bloggers are “loose cannons and ametuer yahoos.” Now, those are fightin’ words there, Mr. Klein.
You could almost see the ‘bloggers, in the dim glow of their monitor screens, cinching up the ties on their bathrobes and getting busy, firing up their weblogs and taking aim. They had already done major damage to CBS just by exposing the forgeries so quickly. Indeed, Dan Rather’s chair had just begun to reinflate itself after his broadcast when the first ‘bloggers began to post their opinions on the matter. Bloggers called Dan Rather’s documents on President Bush’s National Guard Service forgeries within one hour after the show aired, and they were right. Ouch. CBS took nearly two weeks to come grudgingly to something vaguely like the same conclusion.
The warning shots have been fired and now I think we’ll see even more of the same. We are going to see even more ‘fact checking’ by the pajamahadeen crowd and intense research on the players involved. As I write, I believe Mary Maples, the producer of the forgeries flop, is standing in their crosshairs and news of her past exploits is about to break in an unflattering way.
Once the ‘bloggers broke this story, talk radio picked up the flag and the elephants had no choice but to cover the story. The same thing occurred with the Swift Boat Veterans. We are living in a new world of instantaneous news where anyone with a computer can check facts and voice opinions. The ‘bloggers did this and then the other big thorn in the side of the mainstream media got going – talk radio. Once that happened, the big bulls were forced in a direction they did not want to take. Kudos go to FreeRepublic, Powerline, and Little Green Footballs among others. Holding the mainstream media to account is a valuable public service; it’s just sad that it’s required at all. DBJ
Jamie Smith
DBJ Contributing Editor
