Not bloggers, but old media "screwed up"

international | arts and media | other press Thursday June 09, 2005 19:35 by Dr. Coilín Oscar ÓhAiseadha - Spider Force aat2004 at mail dot dk 21 Rockfield Green, Maynooth, Co. Kildare 01-5054592

Village media analyst blames bloggers for same crimes old media committed re Bush and Iraq

For the sake of those who have not read Village magazine this week (3-9 June), I am posting a copy of a letter I've had published, in which I point out that the old media, in their coverage of the appointment of George Bush and the invasion of Iraq, have committed all the crimes that the magazine's media analyst, Conor Brady, in last week's issue accused bloggers of committing.

Fight vote fraud bloggers

Conor Brady is correct to point out the dangers of new media (Village 27 May) for which there are “no mechanisms for the validation of content, for the screening out of material that is inaccurate, dangerous or likely to spread hatred, panic or fear.” Brady points out that “there are no effective sanctions if the blogger screws up, gets it wrong or spreads disinformation that results in people being hurt – or worse.”

But these dangerous deficiencies also apply to the old media’s coverage of the appointment of George W. Bush as president and the invasion of Iraq.

Fox declared Bush the winner of the 2000 presidential election before it was possible to call, and the other networks jumped on, with no validation of content, to make this spurious news item a fact.

Similarly, the traditional media published the lies about Iraq’s (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaeda that justified the invasion.

The traditional media failed to screen out material that was inaccurate and dangerous, and spread hatred, panic and fear. The traditional media screwed up, got it wrong and spread disinformation that resulted in tens of thousands of Iraqis being hurt so they will never hurt any more.

The market knows that the traditional media screwed up. A Harris Poll published by NewsMax in January revealed that 62 percent of Americans distrusted the newspapers, 58 percent distrusted television, and only 43 percent trusted the radio. This helps to explain the growth of the blogs.

Again now, the traditional media are failing to cover the controversy about vote fraud in last year’s US presidential election that is raging in the new media.

Progressive blogs quote an analysis conducted for US Count Votes by an array of university-based statisticians who find that they cannot reject the hypothesis that discrepancies between exit polls and vote tallies were due to “errors” in the vote tallies that gave Bush a majority.

Conservative blogs denounce this hypothesis as a spurious conspiracy theory.

While Conor O’Clery has mentioned this controversy in his column in The Irish Times on 16 April, the rest of the traditional media in Ireland have been dozing.

But the traditional media cannot afford to doze while the evidence is being debated and validated elsewhere. They must fight to hold on to punters – i.e. customers – who would much prefer to follow the debate in the comfort afforded by the paper, TV or radio.


Dr. Coilín Oscar ÓhAiseadha
21 Rockfield Green, Maynooth, Co. Kildare.