Blogswarms

The Anchoress is concerned that the outrage over the Air America Scandal may not be sustainable. What if, she wonders, the media is involved in a stonewall-style pushback, in which they have collectively decided to flatly ignore the next story the blogosphere breaks, especially if it is about them?

Well, there are a couple of things that mitigate against the success of such an idea. First, that kind of collusion among as many people who are involved in the nebulous concept of the "Mainstream Media" is frankly impossible. While it is highly likely that, given a shared political ideology, they would emphasize certain stories and de-emphasize others, the notion that that many disparate entities could manage a rigidly cohesive strategy for very long is just not very believable.

Secondly, we have already seen some chinks in the armor, and if there's anything the media hates worse than Republicans, it's being left behind on a story that everyone else is covering. This is why they spend obsessive amounts of energy on stories that seem to be of little importance to anyone outside the media (Natalee Holloway, Michael Jackson). The reason, very simply, is that everyone else was covering them, and they couldn't be left out. We saw this same kind of reticence with both the Monica Lewinsky story and Rathergate - but once the story was forced out into the open by a single widely-recognized voice, the rest of the media was forced to grudgingly follow suit.

Today, I listened to three major talk radio programs (Glenn Beck, Rush and Hannity), and they all are starting to get involved in the story (showing how far ahead the blogs often are). That's a combined audience of about 40 million people - there simply is no way that this story gets shoved under the rug.

Most importantly, it is critical to remember that the stonewalling of the media is a good thing - because the more they show unwillingness to cover stories that large portions of the population know to exist, the more they lose readership, to the benefit of us, the bloggers. I personally hope the Times stays silent forever on this, because every day they do is just more embarassment when they are finally forced to admit that a story exists.

Comments

[The Anchoress]

Good post, thanks for the gentle smack!

[MachoNachos]

Smack? It was intended as a pick-me-up! Yet another manifest failure of my writing skills. :-)