Kathleen Parker: Speak now and forever wish you hadn't

[question everything]

KATHLEEN PARKER ORLANDO SENTINEL
Speak now and forever wish you hadn't

February 16, 2005

With the recent toppling of CBS's Dan Rather and now CNN's top news executive, Eason Jordan, I think we can declare without fear of contradiction that rigor mortis is settling over the carcass of the Fourth Estate.

At least as we once knew it.

I make this pronouncement without pleasure and, in fact, suggest that we're really witnessing a double funeral. One is for traditional journalism as the omnipotent gatekeeper of information. As bloggers – authors of Web logs – have gleefully pointed out the past several days, everyone with access to the Internet is now a journalist.

Given the "instanaeity" of the bloggers' electronic encampment, known as the "blogosphere" – enabling real-time posting of news and commentary – newspapers and even broadcast media have become the news cycle's Sunday drivers.

As a longtime observer of the blog phenomenon – awed by the volcanic energy and talent that erupts by the nanosecond and flows without pause – I'm a fan. But I'm also wary of such unbridled power. For all their attractive swashbuckling and bravura, bloggers also can become a cyber-mob that acts, as mobs do, without conscience or restraint.

Thus, the other funeral is, I fear, for our freedom of speech. Not the kind we once worried would be quashed by government jackboots, but the sort that restricts the very thing bloggers represent – the freewheeling, unfettered expression of thoughts and ideas without fear of censure. Or without the life-altering, career-busting personal demolitions we've witnessed recently.

(snip)

Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050216/news_lz1e16parker.html

Parker can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].

[applegrove]

1. Yeah - speculation is not information. I hope CNN reports on the

Syrian-Iran story today. And I am sure they will.

There certainly is truth that blogs are a new 'reality'. That they are career enders. That there is a mob mentality. I am guilty of that when it came to Mangate - I keep hoping to this day it will somehow bring down the House of Bush.

I am glad we are at least talking about it. And I still say that the only people who have to gain from the end of CNN are the 'patriotic patsies'.

[Democrat 4 Ever]

3. This chick has been shilling for King Blivet for the last four years

She spews the "family values" and "war is good" BS for so long I don't think she even realizes the silly contradictions of her own words. She certainly didn't hesitate to climb on her soap box about Clinton, Kerry and any other Dem whom she perceived as setting out to destroy her idea of family values. She is carried in my local paper and she is one of the reasons I canceled my subscription. It is very funny her bemoaning the death of the fourth estate - hell, she was one of the ones who fired the gun.

I think today's journalists are being to feel like the buggy whip makers of old. In a fairly short time the whip makers realized that the need for their product was disappearing. Same thing with typewriter manufacturers and hundreds of other industries. Maybe she needs to go get some training on how news is reported today. We don't need buggy whips, or typewriters or biased journalists - they have all been replaced with something better.

[applegrove]

6. Sometimes even shills can be right (though I have heard others

talk about this very issue - so I am now sorry I didn't recognize my source as a neocon mouthpiece.

That is the very essence of the story though - that we have to know our sources (or the source of the information we get). That we as citizens and consumers of the news have to be able to say: this is gossip & speculation, this is a story source and fact checked by the New Yorker, this is a conservative patsie, this comes directly out of the WH so it is complete and utter propaganda sent out by personality types who have demonstrated marked character flaws and willingness to be the mouthpiece for things that are not even human (corporations), etc. etc.

The most important thing is to get the right information so you can make the right decisions about your life. And I think it is true that we need to know and all be aware of the different standards all of the above meet. And for sure a blogger can be just trying to make money on hits or something ... or trying to make a name for themselves, or doing propaganda. Because for bloggers there is no oversight. So we have to know and accept these realities. And not go after CNN in anger because they have to meet different "tests" than a blogger does.

Personally I am very judicious about the information I receive. I have dropped novels based on historical fact (well except for Roots) because I hate the disinformation throughout. And when I see a movie like Hotel Rwanda I sit there the whole way through and say: "okay just the human truths and the frame are accurate ... the dialogue is all made up". Because I do not want to be misinformed. I have always been like that. But didn't I stay up most of the night waiting for that "new ameriblog" information on Mangate a few days ago. Why am I such a sucker. Chasing the story is fun. I do believe there are truths in the mangate story that will reveal more about the current WH (or reveal what I know to more people). But I do not know this for sure and can offer no proof. Why did I chase it so and the MSM didn't?

And why are we all so frustrated with CNN, and they so frustrated with us (the online consumer).

[question everything]

7. Nice post. I think that we - liberals - have to support CNN

why? because it is striving to be balanced, as opposed to that other network that only puts "balanced" in its logo.

If we will leave CNN in droves it will eventually wither and disappear or, worse, will try to be a Fox-wannabe and then what?

So let CNN, and LA Times and others bend a little and give room for RW news and opinions here and there. At least we know that they do provide real journalisms and do identify opinions when this is what they are.

[applegrove]

9. Thank you - so I am not alone in my fear that the creeps are

just trying to separate us Liberals from the MSM. Just like the creeps wedge everything else.

Yes we need to be more tolerant of MSM attempts to er.'survive'.

[tanyev]

2. Cry me a river, Kathleen.

It's called accountability. Remember that quaint concept? Once upon a time, "real" journalists set the standards of accountability. Those days are long gone, and now someone else is going to have to do it for you. Suck it up.

[Skittles]

5. exactly

one has to wonder if there would be such a hunger for "alternative news" if we were satisfied with what we had

[fasttense]

4. Like the crap you get on TV news was Freewheeling? Unfettered expression?

[bemildred]

8. Fascinating to hear Ms Parker talk about attacking without conscience

or restraint. Those of us who remember the hatchet job she did on Ms
McKinney can see a certain irony in that. I guess it all depends on
whose ox is geing gored.