"Now the cocoon has broken"

A brief moment of panic* reading InstaPundit Glenn Reynold's superb summary in The Australian of Rathergate as "just a harbinger of things to come, not just for Rather and CBS but for traditional left-leaning news operations across the world":

Not surprisingly, within hours of the documents' being placed on the internet, people were raising questions. And it's a testament to the cluelessness of the old journalists -- members of what people on the internet like to call "legacy media" -- that they were more suspicious of the rapidity with which these questions appeared than of the documents. Post obviously bogus documents on the internet and find people asking questions about them within hours -- it must be a conspiracy!

In fact, it was the power of open-source journalism. CBS, like most broadcast networks in the US -- and, for some reason, just about everywhere else -- is staffed by people who lean Left and who don't like Bush. That makes them disposed to find even obviously bogus claims about Bush.

Worse yet, they tend to talk mostly with people who share their beliefs. The result is an insular culture, rife with the prejudices of the New Class, which believes all sorts of absurdities and peddles them to the public in the sometimes honest, if often unfounded, belief that they are true . . . Not long ago, CBS probably would have got away with it . . . But not any more. Now the cocoon has broken.

Nor is this phenomenon likely to be limited to the US. The Gilligan affair, and the attitudes and behaviours it exposed, has seriously wounded the credibility of the BBC, and there seems no reason to think that other broadcasters across the world, whether state-affiliated or merely oligopolistic, are likely to do any better. As always happens when the comfortable are afflicted by competition, there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth at this phenomenon. But given the performance of these dinosaurs over recent decades, there seems little reason to mourn the change.

*Here's what got us worrying. If the Kael Effect no longer applies, and we no longer have the likes of Rather & Company to kick around, what will we blog about? We were reassured by Hindrocket's post at PowerLine re the AP's wilfully negative distortion of Allawi's inspiring and uplifting speech before Congress this morning. Having live blogged said speech by "this Winston Churchill of Iraq" -- not to mention Kerry's limp assertion in response that "the prime minister is obviously contradicting his own statement of a few days ago" -- we savored the determinedly gloomy spin of AP's "reportage." Writes Hindrocket:

But the bulk of the AP's account of Allawi's speech is not devoted to an account of Allawi's speech. It is devoted to undercutting and contradicting Allawi's statements, and suggesting that his address to Congress was merely a political ploy by the Bush administration.

All is well. Plenty more Fisk out there for this blogger's mill for the foreseeable future.

Comments

[goomp]

The blogs will disseminate both truth and propaganda, but unless we have a dictator like Hillary who feels we must have gatekeepers for the blogosphere, the truth will be heard as well as the falsehoods, and it is my belief that truth will triumph.

[Jeff Brokaw]

I found Kerry's comments about Allawi insulting, unbecoming for a candidate for President, and disingenuous. If Bush says the sky is blue, Kerry would say it is in fact orange - the opposite, dontcha know. Likewise, the AP spin on Allawi's speech is just stunning (more thoughts here). These people have cast their lot, and they're going down with the ship. Good!

[Sissy Willis]

Glub, glub, glub...Bubbles rise to the surface. Ahhhhh.