From the wire service to the blogosphere: How the public gets its news

New media, specifically the blogosphere, proves to be a unique news media outlet in that it does not subscribe to traditional journalistic standards of unbiased reporting. As newspaper sales continue to fall, more and more people are turning to the internet as their primary source of news. From the far left to the far right — and everywhere in between — the internet is teaming with bloggers and news junkies who are reporting the news in unprecedented ways. Today, the news media is becoming freed from its traditional emphasis on unbiased reporting, with amateur media production continues to blur the line between fact and opinion.

On the left side of the spectrum is Daily Kos, a blog that was started in 2002 by Markos “Kos” Moulitsas, when “an oppressive and war-crazed administration suppressed all dissent as unpatriotic and treasonous.” Kos, a war veteran, currently serves as a writer for the site that averages over one million hits per day and has a staff of over 20 writers and editors.

Daily Kos does not shroud its inherent political bias behind a veil of political correctness. Instead, it analyzes the news in a manner that makes its views and opinions clear and it seems as though its readers are walking the same line. According to a Daily Koss poll that asked readers about their willingness to vote for Sen. John McCain in November, 50 percent, or 6,555 voters, stated “You could not get me to vote for McCain even if you staked me out on a fire ant hill and poured honey on my privates.” Trailing behind in second place, with 23 percent of the votes, was the response “Short of torture, I would not vote for McCain.” Only one percent of voters said that they thought McCain would make a good president.

The Huffington Post exemplifies how technology has influenced the news media. HuffPost, which describes itself as “the internet newspaper,” has an obvious political slant, yet advertises itself as an outlet for news about politics, media, business and entertainment. On May 13, HuffPost ran a post entitled “Pentagon Propaganda ‘Analysts’ Made 4,500 Media Appearances,” which cited that members of the Pentagon media analyst program appeared on television news stations as retired military “media analysts” over 4,500 times. HuffPost editorializes the story most perceptibly by putting the work “propaganda” in the headline. Additionally, the post criticizes the news media, stating that The New York Times, which initially broke the story, “has done little to advance its blockbuster story since it was first reported.”

Towards the center of the spectrum is The Caucus, a blog where the political staff of The New York Times follows the 2008 presidential election campaign trail. While loyal Times readers may be inclined to say that the paper is in favor of Sen. Hillary Clinton — who received support from the paper’s editorial board — The Times’ blog generally veers away from making any outwardly editorialized statements. What differentiates The Caucus from other political blogs such as Daily Kos and HuffPost is the users who generate the sites’ content. Daily Kos and HuffPost can be classified as amateur blogs, in that content is produced by people who have no affiliation with the professional news media. On the other hand, The Caucus is written by the staff of The Times, a corporation whose reputation is dependent on their claim to report unbiased news content.

Looking into the theory

The individualistic nature of new media allows for the unlimited filtering of media content. With the facilitation of content personalization has come the polarization of political opinion. At the source of political polarization is arguably the political blog. Inevitably, political blogs tend to express the viewpoints of a particular party or faction, and appeal to, and are thus read by, people of like sympathies. Furthermore, Teachout (2005) asserts that more and more young Americans are turning away from mainstream media in favor of new media as their news sources. He attests that even when they do turn to mainstream media, such as newspapers, “the web-oriented Americans tend to find them by going to blogs and other websites whose proprietors pick and choose at will from the mainstream media’s offerings, linking to some stories and ignoring others according to their political inclinations,” (Teachout, 2005, 43).

According to Thomas B. Edsall (2007), web-based political sites are, in many ways, becoming more important than newspapers. Political blogs and related sites such as Politico, the Huffington Post, Salon, Slate, the National Review Online, and the Wall Street Journal Online have grown to play vital roles in policy making and election coverage. Political blog sites, such as the Huffington Post, (which is somewhat unbiased as compared with other political blog sites), have the ability to hyperlink to thousands of other news sources. These sources include endless numbers of both liberal and conservative “blogrolls.” These “blogroll” sites then connect readers to politically varied sites, such as RealClearPolitics, TalkingPointsMemo, Instapundit, Taegan Goddard’s PoliticalWire, and the Drudge Report, (Edsall, 2007).

Furthermore, the surging popularity of left and right-winged blogs has become a crucial source for politicians with regards to their campaigns. Campaign staffers currently search for blog postings which positively reflect their candidates and which negatively reflect their opponents. The staffers then mass e-mail these comments, treating them as news releases to both the mainstream media and to new media sources.

One theoretical perspective of new media’s role in the political sphere centers on technological determinism. Technological determinism is the view that a society’s technology imprints its own logic on the culture, social relationships, and history of that society. However, an alternative approach, as pronounced by Philip E. Agre (2002), asserts that there are a multitude of ways, in which the users of technology allocate the technology for the purposes of providing the service of goals, strategies, and relationships. This perspective, known as the amplification model, can be applied to new media’s role in politics. Specifically, the amplification model relates to, among other things, the development of social networks and ways that new media technology can be used to connect people together to form a polity. Thus, the political blog serves as an emblematic example of the amplification model.

With regards to blogging, there are differing theories as to whether blogs function in support of mainstream media or counter to it. According to David Michael Ryfe (2007), writer, Andrew Sullivan, has argued that blogging is “the most significant media revolution since the arrival of television.” This view attests that bloggers are challenging, and possibly even supplanting, traditional news media. However, the opposing perspective presumes that blogs, though an important and significant new media technology, have had less effect on American politics than is generally assumed. This perspective is affirmed by Mark Tremayne in Blogging, Citizenship, and the Future of Media, and by Stephen D. Cooper in Watching the Watchdog. According to proponents of this view, blogs have taken up a symbiotic relationship with the mainstream media, as opposed to a competitive one. Furthermore, Cooper and Tremayne claim that the mainstream media have had as much effect on blogging as blogs have had on them. (Ryfe, 2007: 5-6).

Examples of politics in new media

Al Gore’s Penguin Army (2006, May 24) YouTube.

Billiam the Snowman Responds to Mitt Romney. (2007) YouTube

Regalado, Antonio and Searcy, Dionne. (2006, August 3). Where Did That Video Spoofing Gore’s film Come From?. The Wall Street Journal.

Etalkinghead’s Political Blog Directory. Retrieved May 13, 2008.