The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.
Top 10 blog moments?
: Someone has asked for examples of the top moments of blog influence in politics and the presidential campaign. Obvious starting nominees:
: Howard Dean and MeetUp
: Trent Lott
: Rathergate.
What else? Please leave lots of suggestions in the comments….
moveon.org
Exposure of the Bush/Hitler ads on moveon.org
JibJab
The spread of Jon Stewart’s appearance on Crossfire
Instant-Fisking of Fahrenheit 9/11 on countless blogs.
Next-To-Instant-Fisking of said Fisking on countless other blogs.
Sinclair Broadcasting
RatherGate & Nytro-Gate
Rathergate? Oh, please. Howabout Iraqgate, WMDgate or Nigergate?
The examples you are asking about, in some cases, are about how blogs can elevate the trivial in to a straw issue. I’m not saying that the questionable CBS memos were trivial, but that they are nothing compared to forged letters about Sadam’s purported attempts to buy yellowcake from Niger, which were used as a justification to send 1200 Americans to their death in Iraq.
Note that the Bush/Hitler ads were not made or approved of by moveon.org but were submitted to a contest held by moveon.org. Another example of information blown out of context.
Sept. 11
So I was late to the blog party — what exactly was “Trent Lott” ?
PlameGate & the Sixteen Minutes
Bush’s National Guard Attendance
Swift Boat Veterans – Christmas in Cambodia
Blair-NYT
Andrew Gilligan-BBC
The blogs influenced the presidential campaigns on by putting the candidates on the defensive for a news cycle. The blogs also kept the heat on the media.
Woefully but apparently powerfully this past August, the “outing” (or smearing, I suppose, if the allegations are untrue) of Rep. Ed Shrock (R-VA).
Citations:
http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=74982&ran=126361
and
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47194-2004Aug30.html
The site that started the allegation was http://www.blogactive.com/ which has pretty well fallen by the wayside in terms of any political infleunce, as outing campaigns should– even for hypocrites, in my view.
Dave Sifry started collecting these on his Blogs and Politics wiki
Worth updating it with new ones you find here.
Dave Sifry started collecting these on his Blogs and Politics wiki
Worth updating it with new ones you find here.
Washingtonienne
Stretches the definition of blog, perhaps, but Drudge reporting that Newsweek was “spiking” the Clinton/Lewinski story.
Andrew Sullivan’s relentless blogging against Howell Raines created an outlet for dirt from disgruntled NYT staffers to fuel the Jayson Blair story.
I would bet that if you look at the issues NYT Public Editor Okrent has had to address over the past year, you would find that many of them were driven by bloggers.
If you’re going to mention Sinclair, how ’bout CBS having to move “The Reagans” to Showtime?
Jesse: “Trent Lott” refers to Lott’s comment (at Strom Thurmond’s birthday party) that the country would have been better off had Thurmond become President (Thurmond having run as a segregationist Dixiecrat). They cost Lott his position of Senate Majority Leader.
Not sure this qualifies as an event, but the Democrats and Republicans admitting the top bloggers to cover the event was a watershed moment for the credibility of blogs.
This might seem a self-serving suggestion, and it certainly didn’t affect the larger blogosphere, but I’m still amazed at the way we uncovered the fact that child-molesting “Rabbi” Michael Ozair was operating as KabbalahCoach.com’s Rabbi Michael Ezra.
It was just a casual link by a guy meant to comment on how they have kabbalah coaches in L.A., and one of our readers noticed that Ezra’s picture looked similar to that posted of Ozair on The Awareness Center’s Website.
As it turned out, they were the same guy. Not only that, but Ozair’s plea of no contest to the charges against him years ago had never been reported.
All of this developed in the blogosphere before becoming a story in the Forward, all of it started with an innocuous and casual link, and all of it is because of the interactivity that blogs bring to the table.
I’d say Zeyad & healingiraq.com & the subsequent number of Iraqi blogs that followed should count as a top 10 blog moment.
The release of the Starr Report online.
Salam Pax and Dear Raed.
Command-post.org.
“I’m not saying that the questionable CBS memos were trivial, but that they are nothing compared to forged letters about Sadam’s purported attempts to buy yellowcake from Niger, which were used as a justification to send 1200 Americans to their death in Iraq.”
That reminds me, blogs have kept on the fact that Joe Wilson lied about Niger, and kept on the fact that France has the memos faked to invalidate the US claims, and the other documents showing that Saddam WAS seeking yellowcake in Africa. Oh, and Saddam trying to buy WMDs from Korea right before the war started.
But I wouldn’t say the CBS memos are trivial. A major news network trying to influence an election through forged documents is NOT trivial, especially when the media star responsible refuses to resign and his employers refuse to fire him.
Close to real-time coverage of the Iraq War (ie., Command Post et al)
and
Reporting from inside the war (Milblogs)
Looks like Bill Keller decided to run the NYTrogate story when he did because it was leaking out on the ‘net (see today’s instapundit w/hat tip to Soccer Dad). That caused 60 Minutes to decide against running it this Sunday — 2 days before an election — when there would have been little time to point out the many factual and logical flaws in that story.
Incorporation of blogs into newspaper/mainstream media websites – MSNBC blogs, NYT campaign reporters, Seattle Times editorial board and other sections, Spokane Spokesman-Review (which is a blog pioneer for papers), CS Monitor blogs, etc.
Jeff Jarvis – Buzzmachine
Operation Clark County