Blaming the Bloggers

We know that political blogs have hit the mainstream because they were featured on a recent West Wing episode. But the way they were presented shows exactly how fearful the mainstream is of new technology. I'll use the Jupiter Research summary:

One of the characters was involved in accident, where he crashed a large SUV into a Toyota Prius (which as you imagine might create a bit of an image problem for the West Wing if the story got out).

1. The story is revealed via a political weblog and includes a photo from a cameraphone to back it up. Not just blogging, but moblogging :)

2. When the weblog is dismissed, the character is told that mainstream media all read weblogs and the story will be picked up.

3. When the character calls the weblog author, he tells the author they are off the record and goes into a tirade. To his horror, he sees every word he's uttering being posted in real time in front of him. He's subsequently informed that "these people aren't journalists...", implying that a journalist would be "bound" by his off the record comment and not write about it and a blogger would simply ignore it (and did ignore it).

Yes, those bloggers are such amoral louts, always out to get those in power! They need to be represented as the villian to the good upstanding people on The West Wing, who are simply trying to do the work of the American public!

This is a good storyline, but I think it misreads the whole blogging phenomenon. Bloggers are not the enemy of political figures; in fact, they do far more good than harm (in fundraising, in grassroots organizing, in message framing, et al). What's funny is that the character on The West Wing was trying to cover up his mistake, and yet the blogger ends up getting perceived as the one without scruples. The overwhelming message the mainstream media (fictional or not) seems to be saying is that "bloggers should shut up." That was certainly the thrust of this weekend's Washington Post article, which blamed bloggers for leaking the exit polls on Election Day.

It's also time to make our peace with those self-important bloggers who took it upon themselves to release the first rounds of leaked exit poll results. Those numbers showed Democrat John F. Kerry with a narrow lead, which ignited premature celebrations in one camp and needless commiseration in the other -- until the actual votes showed President Bush had won...But rather than flog the bloggers for rushing to publish the raw exit poll data on their Web sites, we may owe them a debt of gratitude. A few more presidential elections like this one and the public will learn to do the right thing and simply ignore news of early exit poll data. Then perhaps people will start ignoring the bloggers, who proved once more that their spectacular lack of judgment is matched only by their abundant arrogance.

Gee, considering the networks all let the exit poll slip show in the hours leading up to poll closings (by interviewing gloating Democratic operatives, by having talking heads on FOX openly debate how Bush lost the election), and considering that blogs didn't leak the exit poll results themselves, they just posted them, why do bloggers deserve all the enmity? How about the actual exit poll leakers, which get no significant mention in the story?

The WaPo also provides an explanation for why the "Michael Moore crowd" (their words) had reason to doubt the election results themselves:

That final weighting also is central to the controversy over real or imagined electoral irregularities. It's true that exit poll results available on CNN and other networkWeb sites late into election night showed Kerry with that now-infamous three percentage point lead, an advantage based exclusively on exit polling and a pre-election survey of absentee voters. When those survey results were statistically adjusted in the wee hours of Wednesday to reflect the actual vote, Bush suddenly -- and seemingly mysteriously -- jumped into the lead nationally and in several key, closely contested states.

But this sort of final adjustment is done on every exit poll. Most of the time, it doesn't matter because there's a clear winner, and the numbers move up or down slightly while the order of finish remains the same. But because this election was so close, the weighting had the effect of flipping the winner and igniting the fevered imaginations of the Michael Moore crowd.

The change in exit polling weighting, however, is probably the least mentioned of all the voting irreguarity issues blogs have brought up over the last few weeks. But it provides a convenient narrative for major newspapers and the networks to discount the irregularities as "wild conspiracy theories" on the "Internet," which are not to be believed by any rational person. Pretty much every major media story on problems with the vote (except for Olbermann on MSNBC) has a defensive air to it, as if the media is determined to defend the status quo. They obviously have a reason to do so, to save their own skins, and knock down the blogosphere's credibility.

So this hue and cry about how horrible blogs are for America and for journalism is very calculated, a desperate attempt to preserve old media as where the real journalists come from, not that Fantasyland online. It'd be funny if it weren't so sad. I suppose everyone resists change, especially when it will have a definite impact on their livelihood. But that doesn't mean it's going to stop. There's a new blog in the world something like every 4.3 seconds. They're not going anywhere. Maybe old media should find a way to use them positively, instead of smacking down and insulting their own consumer base (because who reads more newspapers and watches more cable news than the blogger?).