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by saint_fiasco
3961 days ago
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Could the reduced effectiveness of journalism be because the government has journalists too? I saw lots of journalists in favor of the war in Iraq. Were there many journalists in favor of war in Vietnam too? I have only seen journalists as they were already declining, but we saw the decline of independent bloggers as it happened. What happened to amateur Internet journalism was not a market failure. It was the government's realizing that the Internet is a force multiplier, and they have a lot of force to multiply. Cue astroturfing, surveillance and the 50 cent army... Could something similar have happened to real journalism too? |
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Of course. And just like the Iraq war, the government used control of information (like trying to suppress publication of the Pentagon Papers) to attempt to maintain support among both journalists and the public.
Fortunately, with a strong journalistic community, combined with the constitution and the supreme court, the government lost. But it took time and significant resources.
Could something similar have happened to real journalism too?
Eh, journalism has always had to fight against the corrupting forces of propagandists. That's nothing new.
The difference is, a large news organization has the time and resources to fight that corruption, while a small time blogger does not.
Of course, where bloggers win is in the sheer distributed nature of their operation. That is, it's a very different thing to muzzle/corrupt a million bloggers versus a dozen newspapers.
So there are pros and cons to both models. But I think there are things traditional news sources can do that bloggers/etc simply can't. And the converse is also obviously true.