HW 6: Questioning the ‘Big Media’
So now after reading more of Blog! I’ve come to learn about how blogging can affect politics and the business world. In the latest essay I’ve read by David Kline he discusses how blogging relates to culture. In his essay, “I Blog Therefore I Am”, he emphasizes the idea that the blogging world of reporting news and events is essentially killing the mainstream media, or as he puts it the ‘Big Media’. My only problem with Kline’s essay is not necessarily the ideas he supports, but rather his own contradictions of such ideas. Firstly, he states his own biased opinions, arguing that the Big Media itself is biased and he then goes on to say that their reports are “hidden by a screen of presumed objectivity”. Furthermore he goes on to argue that bloggers’ biases are openly and proudly stated. This statement of his is biased in itself, not only because he does not give any evidence or examples to demonstrate why he believes traditional news reports are so untrustworthy, but because he also generalized the blogging commyunity by insisting they are all open and proud to share their sometimes conflicting viewpoints. I can only object to these points of his because I believe the blogging community is far to large and diverse to generalize even one small portion of the blogosphere. If Kline had perhaps offered a few facts or example to support his statements, than I would not be so quick to critizize his method of discussing the subject matter at hand.
On the other hand, he is fairly accurate when he brings up the fact that most bloggers provide readers with links to documents and information sources. In that respect, bloggers are much more trustworthy because they aren’t omitting anything like the Big Media: they tell you exactly where they are getting all of their information (at least from what I’ve seen thus far). While it’s true that traditional reporters working for newspaper and news programs don’t always mentions where they are getting their information from, I wouldn’t say I necessarily think they are lying to the public. It’s just easier to track where a typcial citien, a blogger, finds their sources…especially since it’s almost always an internet source. Not to mention these sources are also often other forms of mainstream media news-reporting. So while Kline brings up good points, that makes myself question the media (as I often have in the past) I just don’t know what to think of the Big Media at this time. And while his argument, in that the mainstream media is being pushed out of the way by the bloggers, I can mainly only question the nature of his argument itself. After working on convincing the reader that blogging is quite likely to eventually overcome the Big Media, he contradicts himself yet again when he says that the mainstream media will “in all likelihod not only survive its encounter with blogging, but will actually profit from it”. Yes, I do support many of his theories and ideas brought up throughout the chapter, but not to the extremity that he does. Though I can’t say I fully trust the Big Media, I don’t think it will ever die out. Where do bloggers thet their information from in the first place, after all, but the mainstream media itself?
*Bold text indicates templates or words used from “They Say/I Say” by Graff and Birkenstein (Page 37, for this post).
