War, terror and Internet era: Rumsfeld stresses 'new realities' [A]t the annual Munich security conference this weekend, the controversial US defense secretary mounted a passionate argument for his conviction that the Internet and other modern means of communication have magnified the value of the most powerful weapon of all: information.
"Bloggers and hackers and chat rooms!" Rumsfeld exclaimed Saturday during a question-and-answer session with defense and security officials and experts from around the world. "E-mails and cell phones with global reach!"
"It alters how you have to behave... it adds a level of complexity" to warfare in the 21st century.
Bloggers as News Media Trophy Hunters: With the resignation Friday of a top news executive from CNN, bloggers have laid claim to a prominent media career for the second time in five months. [...]
"The moral of the story: the media can't just cover up the truth and expect to get away with it - and journalists can't just toss around allegations without substantiation and expect people to believe them anymore." [...]
Some on line were simply trying to make sense of what happened. "Have we entered an era where our lives can be destroyed by a pack of wolves hacking at their keyboards with no oversight, no editors, and no accountability?" asked a blogger named Mark Coffey, 36, who says he works as an analyst in Austin, Tex. "Or does it mean that we've entered a brave new world where the MSM has become irrelevant," he asked, using blogger shorthand for mainstream media.
His own conclusion is that the mainstream media "is being held to account as never before by the strong force of individual citizens who won't settle for sloppy research and inflammatory comments without foundation, particularly from those with a wide national reach, such as Rather and Eason." [...]
Mr. Abovitz, who started it all, said he hoped bloggers could develop loftier goals than destroying people's careers. "If you're going to do this open-source journalism, it should have a higher purpose," he said. "At times it did seem like an angry mob, and an angry mob using high technology, that's not good."
Old media hypocrisy in the war on blogging: After threatening for so long to launch an attack on bloggers and blogging, old media has formally launched its attack on blogging this week following the forced resignation of Eason Jordon from CNN.
Newpaper man accuses bloggers of McCarthyism: In an extraordinary attack, a leading international newspaper representative has accused bloggers of McCarthyism in a post to leading editors around the globe.
Authoring the attack was Bertrand Pecquerie, an expert in newspaper syndication and press networks, who is the Director of the World Editors Forum, the organisation for editors within the World Association of Newspapers (WAN).
Eason Jordan vs. the Blogosphere: But the Davos conference organizers refuse to release the tape that would so clearly indict Jordan.
This is reprehensible. However, as blogger Jim Geraghty has written, we can only get at the facts if this tape is released. So, why won?t the Davos people release it? What exactly are they hiding? [...]
The obvious fact is that CNN is trying desperately to make the story go away. This episode merely confirms the institutional anti-military bias of that news organization. If CNN had any patriotic backbone, or even good professional journalistic common sense, it would have, at the very least, suspended Jordan pending a thorough investigation.
Seeing as the blogosphere?s reporting has moved into the upper reaches of the U.S. Senate, it is unlikely that CNN will succeed in its attempted cover-up. Freedom of the press is the best disinfectant for public corruption. Bloggers are doing their duty.
Easongate: A Retrospective
CNN: Eason Jordan Resigns: CNN executive Eason Jordan resigns over his remarks on U.S. soldiers killing journalists in Iraq. Was he too slow to apologize? And did bloggers help seal his fate?
Urge to rant propelling blogs to status of mainstream media: Bloggers have been aided by scandals at the likes of CBS News and The New York Times that tarnished the "gold standards" of the legacy media. Without a doubt, the fact that most office workers and students now have daily access to high-speed Internet has helped bloggers as well. What really boosted bloggers, however, have been their edginess and uniqueness. [...]
Blogging is at once serious journalism, startup business, frustrated ranting, amusing minutiae, relentless self-promotion and revenge of the nerds. (What is the difference between conservative and liberal nerds? Conservative nerds have guns.) In other words, it is a subculture with cultlike loyalty to the phenomenon. Because of this strong sense of community, there is unusual generosity and mutual help among bloggers. [...]
Where then is blogging headed? Some blogs will fade away as exigencies of families and jobs take their toll. Others will doggedly persist, even in obscurity. A few will leverage blogging fame into real jobs in the maligned traditional media. A select few will actually earn a living purely through blogging. [...]
What will keep "independent" blogging alive, however, is the undying need of outcasts to rant. They, like conservatives in Seattle, will blog on, frustrated with their environment and hoping desperately that someone out there will share their views and provide the validation they crave.
A blog-eat-blog world: Journalist warns of Web's credibility issues: The proliferation of online bloggers stands to threaten mainstream news agencies, the Washington bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal said Friday.
Jerry Seib, at Kansas University to receive the annual William Allen White Citation, said traditional media organizations need to do a better job explaining why their standards of objectivity make them preferable to some online sites.
"What an objective press can do that no one else can do is this: It can shine a light on dark corners of the world and do so with credibility," he said.
Spinning Frenzy: P.R.'s Bad Press: Public relations specialists are scrambling to adjust to a time in which the Internet revolution and a boom in alternative media sources are rewriting the parameters of the communications industry and challenging traditional sources of authority. So, despite an avalanche of freely available information, the truth is becoming harder to discern.
No blogs, no chat, no Web fun: Blogs have been banned at Cincinnati City Hall.
So are the Web sites of local radio stations, chat rooms, "adult content" and alcohol and tobacco companies.
Not banned: Web sites of racist groups, organizations advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government, cult groups, and abortion and sex education sites.
How does the city determine which Web sites city employees can surf and which they can't? With the help of Websense, a sort of industrial strength version of software that parents use to block their children from adult Web sites.
MSNBC.com Announces Blog This, the latest communication tool designed to help online news consumers share information and ideas with friends and the public. Blog This is designed to allow users to quickly and efficiently write blogs related to specific MSNBC.com news stories and communicate their opinions to others.
