We ARE the fifth estate
I'm newer to Taylor Marsh's work, but I flat out love her writing. Today, I read a piece on her blog about bloggers being the Fifth Estate, and it really resonated with me. I'd never really looked at it that way, but the so-called Blogosphere really is turning into just that - an alternative to the increasingly consolidated and pliant Fourth Estate.Each and every day, I see something ridiculously slanted or hardly believable, and I lose just a little more confidence in our free press.
Most troubling and annoying of all is how easily manipulated the press is, specifically by this administration. For instance, on the Sunday before the 2006 election, Iraq announced the Saddam Hussein verdict. Or this past February 15, when Bush faced the first significant "No" vote about the war, the Army conveniently announced that it had "captured" a senior Al-Qaeda member. It later turned out to be false.
Blogging is incredibly empowering. The only other time I've felt this empowered is when I campaigned very hard for John Kerry in 2004.
My favorite passage from Marsh's piece:
Since the fourth estate is The Press, then I think it's safe to finally say that the Internets have created another. We are the fifth estate; people who don't take what the corporate hack pack says just because it's uttered from their vaunted and well paid podium. Call it push back or talking back, the blogosphere is here to stay and is ticking people off.She flat out nails it. And it's very important to note that everyone can and should stay involved and on top of the whole idea of Net Neutrality, which the giant media conglomerates so desperately want to do away with. We cannot let that happen, ever, under any circumstances.
The corporate hack pack, whose very word used to be golden, has started to weigh in and they agree. But because they've lost the high perch on which they have pontificated without challenge for years, they're becoming slightly unhinged over their loss of status. The real issue being declining circulation of both newspapers and magazines that threatens their very existence and their paychecks. The Press has become nervous about their very livelihood. Considering how horribly they've served the public over the last seven years I'd say their concern is justified. Lashing out doesn't help their credibility either, but it's what the powerful do when they're challenged by the people.
Read more on Net Neutrality, and what you can do to maintain it, Here.
Another important movement gaining momentum is the increasing calls to support bloggers' rights. Eff.org is a great organization to join, and a great Website to visit often to get updates on this important issue.
Taylor Marsh has more.
Labels: Blogosphere, Fifth Estate, Fourth Estate, Taylor Marsh
posted by RJ at 3:46 PM
3 Comments:
You said:
"Each and every day, I see something ridiculously slanted or hardly believable, and I lose just a little more confidence in our free press."
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Man, I feel the same way when I turn on the primetime network news or read something from the NY Times. Finally, we agree that the liberal media is way too biased!
Honestly, the NY Times is hardly perfect, and I never said it was. (Judith Miller or Jayson Blair, anyone?) But honestly, neither are the other so-called right-wing papers and networks, either. The last time I checked, the Wall St. Journal (I subscribe and read it every day) and Fox News Channel are pretty far from perfect, too.
The bottom line is, I don't trust ANY of the media conglomerates.
I'm a huge fan of the blogosphere and all it offers in terms of citizen journalism, social networking and so much more.
However, I disagree with "net neutrality" supporters who claim that "the 1st amendment of the internet is threatened" or that without new net neutrality legislation that "end free speech is near." I have been following the net neutrality debate in my work with the Hands Off the Internet coalition for a while now.
The threat as I and many others, including many senior network engineers, is from legislation such as Dorgan-Snowe that would essentially freeze the boradband market in place and severely limit what can be done online. Also, these predictions are based merely on hypothetical scenarios implying that the internet (users, ISPs, et) exist in a vacuum without current laws and regulations.
As a recent article in the Guardian noted,
"The UK's most prominent internet engineer, Professor Jon Crowcroft of Cambridge University, thinks that activists had imagined a bogus demon. 'Net Neutrality is a misdirection, a red herring,' he says.
Save The Internet took full advantage of rational fears, argues veteran internet engineer Richard Bennett, but in doing so, it created 'an Intelligent Design for the Left'.
The gap between fear and reality is even more stark when the technical issues are examined. The Neutrality amendments rejected by Congress last year would have made many of today's private contracts illegal, and outlawed the techniques such as "traffic shaping" that ISPs use to curb bandwidth hogs, says Bennett.
Misunderstanding the internet
Even worse was the long-term chilling effect. Neutrality would have made designing a better internet much harder, says the man commonly described as the father of the internet.
Dr Robert Kahn says that Neutrality legislation poses a fundamental threat to internet research because it misunderstands what the internet really is; it's a network of networks, and experimentation on private networks must be encouraged.'The internet has never been neutral,' explains Crowcroft. 'Without traffic shaping, we won't get the convergence that allows the innovation on TV and online games that we've seen in data and telephony."
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,2049763,00.html
Thanks.
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