Not Your Father’s News

In 2004 23 percent of young people 18 to 29, the demographic I fall into, surveyed stated that they got their election news from traditional nightly news network coverage. This number was down from 39 percent just four years ago. So who do young people turn to for their election and political coverage? One answer would be Jon Stewart, and the other would probably be Internet websites, in particular bloggers.

You might be wondering just what the heck bloggers are and why people would get news from them. Quite simply a blogger is someone who writes, or posts as it is called, to a weblog. A weblog, or blog for short, is a collection of stories displayed in reverse chronological order where the visitors can read much like a diary. Topics range from the personal to politics. The political blogs have become quite popular and are a way to gauge some points of interests to the younger generation. Before I go too deep into who these people are and what sites are prominent in the blogosphere, the collective weblog community, lets focus on Jon Stewart.

Jon Stewart is known as ?the most trusted name in fake news.? Stewart is also known as an outspoken critic of established media sources. His appearance on CNN?s Crossfire, some would say, has lead to the shows cancellation. Stewart has commented that his appearance didn?t cause the cancellation; the show itself caused its own cancellation. During his appearance on Crossfire, Stewart complained about the state of television journalism and called both Tucker Carlson and co-host Paul Begala as ?partisan hacks? in addition to suggesting their show had failed to inform viewers about politics as a serious topic. He also asked the pair to ?Stop hurting America. You?re doing theater when you should be doing debate, which would be great. What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery.? This clip became one of the most widely viewed videos to date on the Internet, with more than 670,000 people downloading the clip. (SF Gate)

Stewart has also authored a best-selling book, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book): A Citizen?s Guide to Democracy Inaction, as well as won a Peabody award for his political coverage on The Daily Show in 2005. Ratings for The Daily Show have the program reaching about one million viewers nightly. There is also anecdotal evidence that the majority of Daily Show viewers are university students.

The show’s writers often repeat the fact that The Daily Show is a comedy program and not a reliable news source by itself. The show does not follow the normal rules of journalistic integrity, but much of the schtick of the program involves questioning whether or not establishment television news sources in the United States, notably the cable news channels CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News Channel, are holding themselves to high journalistic standards. Also, even if one were to rely on The Daily Show for regular information, they’d be slightly out of date as the show usually covers news from the day before (due in part to the taping schedule). (Wikipedia)

Interestingly, the National Annenberg Election Survey at the University of Pennsylvania ran a study of American television viewers and found that fans of The Daily Show had a more accurate idea of the facts behind the 2004 presidential election than most others. The study primarily focused on comparing the audiences of The Daily Show with that of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The Late Show with David Letterman, but Daily Show viewers also beat out people who primarily got their news through the national evening newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC and those who mostly read newspapers, while roughly matching the knowledge level of viewers who watched a considerable amount of cable TV news. The study attempted to compensate for the fact that many viewers of The Daily Show get information from many sources including the Internet, though most analysts and show staffers prefer to think that Daily Show viewers use the show as part of their news filtering process rather than a source in itself. (Wikipedia)

Since The Daily Show requires its viewers to come to the program with at least an understanding of what is going on in the world already, most young people get their information from the Internet. Blogs are probably the most prominent and most controversial source of opinion and news for politics on the Internet. Between the debunking of the Dan Rather memos that were aired on 60 Minutes regarding President Bush?s National Guard service to the ousting of a peculiar reporter in the White House press corps, Jeff Gannon/James Guckert. Some might argue that Gannon was a blogger, but he was actually presenting his partisan website, Talon News, as a newsletter or news source for GOPUSA.

Besides Gannon, there are more respected political blogs on the Internet representing both parties. With names such as Power Line, Instapundit, Daily KOS, Wonkette, and Eschaton you might wonder if you are in fact reading political commentary or rather some science fiction website.

Power Line is a conservative blog run by three lawyers, John H. Hinderaker (“Hindrocket”), Scott W. Johnson (“The Big Trunk”) and Paul Mirengoff (“Deacon”). Power Line covers political and social issues relevant to conservative Americans. It gained notoriety in 2004 for reporting on the Killian documents controversy, dubbed “Rathergate,” during which the bloggers and their readers contributed their research and findings to coverage of the case. Powerline became part of the Pajamahadeen, when criticized by a former CBS News executive. The bloggers’ disagreements with the editorial opinions of the hometown (Minneapolis) Star Tribune newspaper are frequently posted on the site. (Wikipedia)

Instapundit is a U.S. political weblog produced by Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee. It is one of the most widely-read blogs in the world. It is sometimes considered a War Blog because of its frequent sympathetic coverage of America’s war on terrorism and war in Iraq. Other common topics are technology (such as nanotechnology, space exploration, and digital photography), individual liberty, domestic politics, the media, and the blogosphere as a social phenomenon. Most of the content consists of links to other sites, often with brief comments. Reynolds encourages readers to explore the wider blogosphere and to read in full articles and posts that he links to. (Wikipedia)

Daily Kos is an American political weblog aimed at Democrats and progressives. It is arguably the most influential liberal weblog in the US. Daily Kos is run by Markos Moulitsas ZĂșniga, a young United States Army veteran, as part of his political consulting firm. It has daily traffic of 450,000 or more, and often reaches over 2,500,000 unique visits in one week. The main difference between Daily Kos and other liberal political blogs, such as Atrios, Political Wire or Talking Points Memo, is the sheer volume of content on the site. Daily Kos is not a standard blog, but an interactive site powered by the collaborative media application Scoop, by which user comments are privileged similarly to blog entries. Thus, while Moulitsas and several others post entries directly to the front page, the site also features “diaries,” user entries that flow into the site at a speed of up to several per minute. These are identical in format to the main posts, and can advance to ‘recommended diary’ status by user vote, and at Moulitsas’s discretion can be promoted to the front page. (Wikipedia)

Ana Marie Cox is a well known political blogger who writes under the pen name Wonkette. Cox is the former executive editor of Suck.com. Wonkette is also the title of her popular political weblog. Published by weblog group Gawker Media, Wonkette is an often-racy journal of gossip and goings-on in the U.S. capital. Since going online in October 2003, the site and its author have gained notoriety in the political world for publicizing the story of Jessica Cutler, aka Washingtonienne, a Capitol Hill staff assistant who accepted money from a Bush administration official and others in exchange for sexual favors. The site focuses heavily on gossip, humor, and the downfall of the powerful; there is little attention paid to more “serious” matters of politics or policy. (Wikipedia)

Dr. Duncan Black, known under his internet publishing pseudonym as Atrios, is the author of the popular liberal weblog Eschaton, which receives an average of over 100,000 hits per day. He is also a regular commentator on Air America Radio’s The Majority Report, and lives in Philadelphia. He holds a PhD in economics from Brown University. He previously worked at the London School of Economics, the UniversitĂ© catholique de Louvain, the University of California at Irvine, and recently, Bryn Mawr College. Black is now a Senior Fellow at the liberal media research group, Media Matters for America. For a long time Atrios, who apparently emerged from the Internet forums of The WELL, remained pseudonymous and joked that he was actually a high school gym teacher. However, during the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, he revealed that he had accepted a job at Media Matters for America and allowed his name and photo to be published. (Wikipedia)

Media Matters for America is not really a blog, but it also contains lots of political information, mainly corrections or pointing out when traditional media outlets fail to properly present topics or debunk obviously false information in their reports. ?On its web site, which was launched in October 2003, it is described as “a Web-based, not-for-profit progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Conservative misinformation is defined as news or commentary presented in the media that is not accurate, reliable, or credible and that forwards the conservative agenda.”? (Wikipedia)

Still, some do not consider bloggers real journalists, even as some of the more popular blogs are being treated to traditional benefits of regular media outlets. Durning last years Democratic National Convention some of the 15,000 media credentials were granted to bloggers. At the same time, the Republican convention did not grant normal media credentials to Republican bloggers, instead handing their applications to the staff that oversaw student and weekly papers.

It’s a matter of definitions, said gallery supervisor Jerry Gallegos, who says that, these days, it’s not always easy to distinguish real journalism from widely broadcast rants. “Anyone with a computer and home publishing can call themselves whatever they want,” he said. “If it’s a retired couple that just decides they’ve got an opinion, that doesn’t make them a news organization. It just makes them a retired couple with an opinion and a website.” (Boston.com)

The way people get their political news and information has changed tremendously since the age of the Internet. Young Internet savvy youth have several new ways to get their information, ranging from blogs to ?fake news? television programming. Blogs seemingly take on the stories that slip through the cracks of established media, and sometimes even expose bad reporting from the traditional outlets as well. This age of new media is having an affect on the established system, as CBS? own website alludes to the fact that Jon Stewart?s name has been tossed around in filling Dan Rather?s anchorman position. ?Asked twice, Moonves wouldn?t rule out a role in the evening news for Comedy Central?s Jon Stewart, whose ?The Daily Show? skewers politicians and the news media each night.? (CBSnews.com)

Works Cited

Jon Stewart. Wikipedia, the free encycolpedia. 11 April 2005. Wikimedia. 11 April 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Stewart

The Daily Show. Wikipedia, the free encycolpedia. 11 April 2005. Wikimedia. 11 April 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Show

Dan Rather?s Chair May Get Crowded. CBSNEWS.com. 18 Jan 2005. CBS. 11 April 2005. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/01/18/national/main667604.shtml

Young people turning comedy shows into serious news source. Mealnie McFarland. 22 Jan 2004. Seattle Post-Intelligencer. 11 April 2005. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/tv/157538_tv22.html

Young Voters turning to fake anchor for insight. Joe Garofoli. SFGate.com 21 October 2004. San Francisco Chronicle. 11 April 2005. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/10/21/MNGVP9D9OG1.DTL

Power Line (blog). Wikipedia, the free encycolpedia. 11 April 2005. Wikimedia. 11 April 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Line_(blog)

Instapundit. Wikipedia, the free encycolpedia. 11 April 2005. Wikimedia. 11 April 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instapundit

Glenn Reynolds. Wikipedia, the free encycolpedia. 11 April 2005. Wikimedia. 11 April 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Reynolds

Daily KOS. Wikipedia, the free encycolpedia. 11 April 2005. Wikimedia. 11 April 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Kos

Wonkette. Wikipedia, the free encycolpedia. 11 April 2005. Wikimedia. 11 April 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonkette

Ana Marie Cox. Wikipedia, the free encycolpedia. 11 April 2005. Wikimedia. 11 April 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ana_Marie_Cox

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. Wikipedia, the free encycolpedia. 11 April 2005. Wikimedia. 11 April 2005. http ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markos_Moulitsas_Z%FAniga

Atrios. Wikipedia, the free encycolpedia. 11 April 2005. Wikimedia. 11 April 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrios

Media Matters for America. Wikipedia, the free encycolpedia. 11 April 2005. Wikimedia. 11 April 2005. http ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Matters_for_America

Jeff Gannon Admits Past ?Mistakes,? Berates Critics. Howard Kurtz. Washingtonpost.com. 19 February 2005. Washington Post. 11 April 2005. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36733-2005Feb18.html

Blogs Colliding with Traditional Media. Joanna Weiss. Boston.com. 10 May 2004. The Boston Globe. 11 April 2005. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2004/05/10/blogs_colliding_with_traditional_media?mode=PF

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