"Five Years of Media Tears" by Patricio Chile

The American Forum on Tuesday prompted me to reflect on how crucial the media’s role has been during the Iraq war. It is interesting to note that at the same time the war began in 2003 and developed since then, the world of journalism has been engaged in its own war.

This conflict in the media industry is a civil war, a divisive conflict with an often-awkward reconciliation between traditional print and broadcast journalism and the innovations of online reporting through blogs and other user-generated content. The battleground is a question: what is true journalism? The conflict raised questions as to whether the mainstream media covered the conditions leading to the war acccurately. The mainstream media and user-generated online media have also been tested during the conflict as to how well they can cover the situation in Iraq. Some have criticized too much reporting on the negative aspects of the conflict and others have said the media focuses too little on the downside of the war.

We all know that bloggers and user-generated content have added an additional element to the reporting of news: the average citizen. A practice no longer confined to radio programs, news channels like CNN now demand that viewers send in their opinions, photos and videos of news events. YouTube users have even acted as moderators on the 2008 presidential debate. Though the opinions of citizens can hardly be seen as true journalism, public involvement does well to point out inadequacies in political and media practices. As one of the panelists said at the forum, the 24-hour news cycle has stripped professional journalists of the ability to reflect on their content adequately. However, the blogosphere has picked up on their mistakes and has provided feedback on their coverage.

Bloggers have more freedom since they aren’t constrained by the formal rules journalists have to follow when it comes to getting sources and such. They are also not constrained by the pressure of having to sell their content to mass amounts of people. As Michael Massing, the journalist and the author of “Now They Tell Us,” said at the forum: “There’s a culture in which independent thinking is not accepted.” Thus, the online world offers the courage and freedom to not only express one’s opinion but to present facts that would normally be deemed controversial or against the status quo. It is this growing opportunity for dissent that is driving the changes in the world of journalism.

The panelists were asked during the forum whether they thought future conflicts would be questioned better, now that we’ve seen the consequences of limited reporting before Iraq. Post staff writer Michael Dobbs said anyone who thought the media was perfect was “foolish”. This is especially true today as news companies downsize and the public turns to the internet more. Most panelists agreed that big change should not be expected. However, I think that as citizens maintain their own 24-hour watch on the media and politics, there may be less room for politicians and journalists to make mistakes. Former Va. Sen. Governor George Allen’s “macaca” incident is proof of this. The other side of the issue is whether this new media source can be reliable with the information it distributes. Fact checking is and always will be a necessary practice. With almost 4,000 soldiers dead and many wounded in Iraq, we can certainly hope that this new watchdog remains reliable and vigilant.

SOMETHING FUN: BarelyPolitical.com, the Web site responsible for Obama girl, satires news, politics, and the mainstream media. Their provocative take on the internet as a source of news is shown in this ad for their site: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FnHqN0DN8A