Summer CE Week #1: “All Umbrage All the Time”
A day rarely passes in this campaign without someone’s taking grave offense to something.
A reader logging on as KellyB last week posted a comment on a Politico.com story covering the funeral of former White House spokesman Tony Snow: “Rest in peace, Tony. You were a kind, decent soul on this earth for too short a time. May God always watch over your family.” But KellyB couldn’t resist amending the gracious condolence with this: “Politico.com—The Official Water Carrier of Barack H. Obama’s Campaign.”
How cordial. After a decade of waiting for the first “Internet election,” it’s finally here, and we’re adrift from all the old-media moorings. “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one,” the great critic A. J. Liebling wrote more than half a century ago. Today, of course, we’re all press lords, or can be. But the “crowd-sourcing” of news cuts both ways. Like democracy itself, it can cleanse, correct and ennoble. Or it can coarsen, spread lies and degrade the national conversation.
Everything about the Web is double-edged. It’s hard to believe, but YouTube wasn’t even around in 2004. Now it (or other streamed video) is a godsend for anyone who wants to follow politics closely. But YouTube is also a pixilated guillotine for any public figures inclined to show a little humanity (that is, fallibility or a penchant for inconvenient truth-telling) when they step out of their house. Colin Powell told me recently that he’s even had to put up with picture takers in the men’s room.
Blogging is a good news/bad news story, too. Daily Kos held a convention last week in Texas full of self-congratulation. Like Thomas Paine and the ideological pamphleteers who provoked the American Revolution, bloggers help enliven and expand public debate. They are indispensable aggregators of political news.
But we’re finding this works better for keeping on top of daily flaps than for learning genuinely new information. Bloggers rarely pick up the phone or go interview the middle-level bureaucrats who know the good stuff. It’s a lot easier to chew over breaking stories and bash old media. Where do they get the information with which to bash? Often from, ahem, newspapers.
Which are shriveling this year. Talk is cheap and reporting is expensive. Anyone can sit at home pontificating in PJs (I’ve done it myself), but it costs nearly $1.5 million a year for a bureau in Baghdad. As newspapers lay off hundreds of reporters in the face of assaults on their classified advertising by the likes of Craigslist, who will actually dig for the news? A few sites (e.g., TalkingPointsMemo.com) are getting into the game. But eventually, Google and other search engines will have to form consortiums to subsidize the gathering of news. Otherwise there won’t be anything worth searching for.
Print is moving rapidly in exactly the wrong direction. Take Sam Zell, new owner of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. In the name of “productivity,” he wants print reporters to file a lot more stories that are much shorter. Just about the only comparative advantage print journalism retains is in well-reported stories too long to be comfortably read online.
Two ironies of the new age: the Netroots demand transparency from everyone except themselves. They still usually prefer to shoot from behind a rock of anonymity. That way KellyB doesn’t have to defend her (or his) unfair rap against Politico.com. Until this changes and the culture of the Web demands that people identify themselves, online political power will not extend beyond small-donor fund-raising (a hugely positive development this year). That’s because members of Congress respond only to e-mails with names and addresses from their districts.
The second irony is that people often prefer rumors to facts. They so distrust the mainstream media that they may believe, say, lies about Obama’s being a Muslim that reach their IN box from their cousin’s friend’s brother, whose nephew got it from his mother-in-law, who can’t recall where it came from in the first place, over the careful reporting of a reputable news outlet.
But how to explain the venom of so many comment sections and e-mails? Like senior citizens suffering from dementia, Web users often fall prey to “disinhibition”—the lack of a filter for their most brutal thoughts. In the campaign, this takes the form of an umbrage explosion, where a day rarely passes without someone’s taking grave offense over something.
In the pre-Web era, this was less of a problem. The New Yorker cover satirically depicting Obama as a flag-burning Muslim and Michelle as a gun-toting radical would have been seen by only a few hundred thousand subscribers, almost all of whom would have gotten the joke. Instead, in today’s 24/7 news cycle, it was seen by tens of millions of people. It was the knowledge of such a big audience for the cartoon—other Americans who “wouldn’t understand”—that fueled the over-the-top fury of the Obama supporters. You can’t erase a powerful image from someone’s mind any more than you can unring a bell.
One would have hoped that the presence of millions of little press lords on the Web would mean a much greater range of stories. Instead, Web traffic closely tracks the latest cable obsession. Even last week’s specter of bank runs for the first time since the 1930s couldn’t shift the focus from umbrage to substance. For two days, the Obama-New Yorker flap (and yes, I covered it, too) obliterated everything else in the media universe.
The good news for Obama (or for John McCain when he makes a gaffe) is that all these weekly flaps quickly pass. When flaps came monthly or quarterly in a campaign, they lingered in the system. Today’s media feeding frenzies are the equivalent of junk food, leaving everyone immediately hungry again. The immediacy and ubiquity of the Web intensifies the binge-and-purge cycle, but it also makes it commonplace. Most voters don’t notice or remember for long.
The umbrage and venom and brilliant crowd-sourced insights are all preserved forever in archives, but there’s too much of it for anyone to track. By the end of this first Internet campaign, we’ll know everything. And nothing.
I definitely agree with the authors sentiment here. As I browse online, I notice that the almost every day there’s some new, tiny little thing that writers or bloggers are seizing on, like McCain’s video about the media attention Barack Obama has been recieving. I didn’t see that little item mentioned after the first day I heard about it, however. The author seems spot on when they compare it to eating junk food. Once they spot their little morsel of information, they dive onto it and devour it rapidly, quickly absorbing and forgetting it. After only a short period of time, they want more, and dive right into the next thing, be it a tidbit that they think proves their candidate inferior or a bite of information that shows the other candidate to be lacking. I see this all the time, and it irks me that we’re turning into a culture with the mass attention span of a goldfish. The decline in newspaper employment saddens me, as the intrepid reporter dogged enough to dig deep enough is part of our nations history. Where would we be without our Bob Woodward’s and Carl Bernstein’s to break stories like Watergate? We need the kind of determination that reporters have, knowing it’s their job to dig deep and expose scandal, but also to report on when things aren’t falling apart, stories that make us feel good. Most stories on the internet are not so kind. The kind of attention the information gathered in the Darwin Awards lists calls to a less than wholesome desire, one more morbidly curious and mean-spirited than what you might find in your daily newspaper.
OK. How do we navigate around town? Our GPS system. How do we stay in touch with family and friends? Cellphones. How do we find good restaurants? or what movies are playing this week at the local theater? COMPUTERS!! We have to face the fact that we live in a technologically advanced world. We shop, eat and now vote online. Blogs and online journals are quickly becoming the source of venting and expressing our opinions, and Johnathan Alter was right, why get up and go the the newspaper to post your column on the presidential election, when you can go to 12 million websites and post them for free!?? The internet and all of the advanced technology that accompany it are quickly building up to cause America to sprout with Liberalism, and now we can have place where even lower class Americans have a say in who and what runs our country! Hop on your computer, type in Barack Obama in google, and find all the dirt you’d need to know about the guy!!! Its smart and novel that we are utilizing the internet more and more, especially for something as important as the presidential election for two thousand and eight.
Today in America, almost everything and everybody is controlled or ruled by a computer or some other electronic device. This can be both good and bad for a presidential election, because untrue comments or ideas claiming they are “insider sources” can make or break a presidential candidate’s hope of becoming president. It seems like today we are desperate to find out the dirt on people and we feel like it is our duty to spread lies and cause further harm to people. But years ago people couldn’t wait for electronic presidential elections, but now that they are upon us people don’t like this idea! You can’t have it both ways! Once something like the internet is used in presidential elections, you can never go back to old practices. And I do have to agree with the author that we grab at every little morsel of knowledge and lies about people and think that they are the truth. Rather than focusing on what is important in this election, people are more concerned with someone’s faith or their private lives and discard the importance each presidential candidate holds to the nation. Its like when the internet was claiming Barack Obama was of the Muslim faith and that’s all people could focus on for about a month. Or when on the internet people were claiming McCain wasn’t a U.S. citizen and he shouldn’t be allowed in the presidential race. Everyone forgot what is truly important and focused on things that didn’t matter.
It is also sad that people prefer the internet to get their news, rather than picking up a newspaper and reading. We must be a nation that wants information that second, rather than taking the time to get a newspaper and read what is happening in the world. I find that most newspapers, with a few exceptions, cover a variety of articles with different opinions. Unlike on the internet, you can find websites devoted to hating McCain or Obama. Pick up a newspaper and read! It can be more enjoyable than reading lies on the internet!
But on the other hand, having a blog or journal where the average American can post their ideas and vent their feelings is also a great tool. Where else can you read posts from people feeling the exact same feelings you are on an issue. The best part is that it is free!
But since the internet is such a great tool that everyone uses, the candidates and other people need to except that elections will never be the same again.
In Response to Kellie Hensley: I agree with you that the internet is beneficial; however, we must look deeper. Is the internet reliable? Is what we read really true? ANYONE can post anything – our AP Gov. class for example. Look at Wikipedia. Sure, many people actually know what they are talking about, but what about those people who post false information? You said that with an election as important as this, it is good that we have something as novel as the internet – but what is really true? For an election, people need to be reading reliable, well researched facts.
I agree with this author that the internet and technology has a huge impact on Americans everyday. That’s where people go to get their news because it’s free. Even if we don’t like how impersonal and fast paced our country has become, we can’t turn back on it now. Computers and cell phones are practically indispensable in our everyday lives. We’ve become accustomed to having whatever we want, when we want it. I personally think it’s sad how people never take the time to research things in books or newspapers anymore. Just type in google and you’re good. Eventually it’s going to be a huge problem with employment because so many magazines and publishing companies will probably go out of business. The same could be said for Post Offices and banks because of e-mail and online banking options. I hope it doesn’t get carried that far because I don’t want our society to become completely cut off from each other and only rely on technology to connect to the world. There has to be some kind of balance because the internet is a great convenience that I wouldn’t want to be without.
I found a lot of truth in this article; many of the points made were so valid.
My first comment is about the internet in general.Thirty years ago people didn’t even know what a Mac computer was and now there are so many web browsers available that one doesn’t even know which one to use. The “internet revolution” is definitely here. A public figure makes one mistake and boom it is on YouTube for the whole world to see. YouTube is an absolutely ridiculous concept to me [someone takes video on there phone and the next hour it is posted…incredible].
The other point I want to touch on is blogging. Anyone can start a blog. “Bloggers rarely pick up the phone or go interview the middle-level bureaucrats who know the good stuff. It’s a lot easier to chew over breaking stories and bash old media.” This is like the worst kind of gossip magazine. Random people able to start rumors all over their opinions on world issues or other crap that they choose to write about. I just wish we lived in an age where people could tell it how it is, after getting the cold hard facts, but I guess talk is cheaper. This also leads into the fact that the media has no filter (like the article stated). People can say and write anything, within reason, and get away with it because it falls under freedom of the press or freedom of speech. It’s like WOW way to stretch the Constitution.
The other point this article made that is true is that some people prefer rumor of facts. WHAT IS THAT????? I am completely flabbergasted. What our world is so horrible that people can’t handle the truth? Yes, a lot of bad comes out of the world, but there is a lot of good too. I would rather know if the U.S. is in danger of a complete economic crisis than be left in the dark.
The bit in this article about the New Yorker magazine’s satirical imagery involving Obama and his wife in a apparently Muslim supporting situation I believe serves a very good point. I saw the cover of that issue and at first was startled. However, the image is not speaking the truth but only speaking a volume louder than words to an audience intended to be informed, well-educated individuals. The Internet cannot monitor audience. Such images as the one appearing on the New Yorker were not intended to be seen by millions of people just surfing around on their at-home computer with really no political understanding. Certain articles and images are intended for certain demographics and the one from the New Yorker was for a politically well-minded, educated person as opposed to your “average Joe” (like myself included at this point). The final statement of this article is very true in that the “Internet-election” leaves the entire general American public knowing everything but in that same light, absolutely nothing at all. Statements and images begin to lose their value and truth as they become available to the masses and give the masses the capability to create their own truths. I believe the Internet and technology has created a true revolution in our lifestyles, although to have it revolutionize the political world as well may be dangerous.
I agree with this author. The internet can be both good and bad. It’s great that we have blogs to express our views and how we feel but they can be misleading. Not everybody is telling the truth. Anything can be posted and that’s why it’s not a reliable way to get information. It’s too bad that people will believe anything they hear. If people started to read newspapers or watch the news they might not be so drawn to every little rumor they hear. I don’t want to sound hypocritical because I hardly ever watch the news and never read the newspaper but I make sure when I do get information, that it’s from a reliable source. I definitely don’t believe everything I hear and I definitely don’t crave rumors. But there are a lot of people who do crave rumors more than facts though. I can understand why. Rumors tend to be more interesting and juicy and facts are dull. However, I think a lot of people can’t even tell the difference between fact and rumor which is why this internet election may not be the best thing. And why little jokes like what The New Yorker published went too far.
As much as everyone says the internet/computers is ruining us, does it really compare to how much they have help and inhanced the elections as well as other everyday things. As previously stated above, computers are what we use in everyday life, whether for directions, information, or misc. uses. I understand that in blogs as well as other forms of “computer news” that there can be wrong, misinterpreted rumors that can span the internet, but as it says in this article, people will forget about it in a day. People are always looking for new things so the rumors dont really stick in people’s heads. Just look at America and how the computer media has helped so many more people get invloved in the upcoming presidency. Too many Americans do not know enough about the candidates and their policies, so the internet is a good way for people to learn about them. So in a way it is helping the candidates expand their ideas to the people. I do agree that newspapers and the news is a much more reliable source then many of what we see on the internet, but that’s why people have to be smart about what they read and choose for themselves if they are going to believe it. Personally for me, sophmore year when we had to look up articles for our global issue assignments, the internet was very helpful in finding an article and it was a fast way.
This is in response to Sarah Massie,
Although the Internet is an extremely ire liable source, television and newspapers are not much better. Yes, they both give true information but most of the time they only give you half of the story. The media only allows the people to hear what they want them to. Tell me how often do you hear the success of what is happening in Iraq? Rarely. But in another article from this week, “Fortune has favored Obama”, it clearly states that there could be a 16-month timetable for withdrawal. Instead the media chooses to portray the thousands of deaths of Amer9ican soldiers. Now I’m not saying that informing America of their deaths is bad. I have the highest respect for the men and women who lay down their lives for their country and it is the least we could do is to recognize them for their bravery. But why does they media have to portray it as “bad?” They should show the country the success of the soldiers so that pride is established in the country rather then regret of the war.
“You can’t trust everything you read on the internet,” is always the famous line. And it is completely true. These days, anybody can post anything about any subject, and some people believe them. Which is how rumors, especially about politics, spread. But it is also a good source to find the truth about such subjects. However, finding the ‘reliable sources’ are always hard to do and most people don’t want to try that hard. I feel bad for politicians these days because of how fast news travels and because of all these ‘false posts’. Back in the day, politicians had three ways for news to travel: television, phone, or word of mouth. Today we have so many including still these three: billboards, computers, paparazzi and many many more. I can completely relate to the statement “people often prefer rumors to fact.” My mom everyday gets dumb things in her e-mail inbox, usually sent from my mother’s cousin’s sister no less, and they are usually stupid statements that are obviously not true. But why shouldn’t people prefer rumors? Of course they are going to because rumors are way more interesting. No one wants to hear about the everyday stuff, but when something comes around that is interesting, they cling on to it.
In response to this article i do not htink internet and TV is the only media we cannot trust. If one look carefully enough even the newspapers contain bias. I also think that we have to see how the advancement in technology has not also helped entertain us and make illiterate people aware of current events, in medicine today we have endless possibilities. We can see inside humans, we can examine heart beats, we can detect tumors, we can see the brain and so on. With out computers none of this would be possible. I also hope that it does not get out of hand. Even now, we can communicate through the internet. seeing and talking.
I think the statement that people prefer rumors to facts is rather unfair. Yes, it’s always entertaining to watch closely the lives of the stars and the candidtes. But rumors are usually negative and usually bad. This is why they are spread. In reality, most of us would want to hear the truth about a candidate and not something false.