The War Against Journalism is a lot like the Copyright Wars, or the War for Decency, or the U.S. government’s War on Internet Gambling. Or the Chinese Great Firewall, for that matter.
A lot of casualties, but ultimately futile.
There is no doubt that a war against journalism is taking place. Iraq has been the costliest war in history, for journalists. Glenn Greenwald says journalists are now considered legitimate military targets, by both sides.
That’s not all. The Judith Miller jailing sparked a new wave of government stifling of the U.S. media. Subpoenas are now regularly issued, and enforced. Journalists are jailed, sometimes, for what appears to be little reason. And there seem to be few complaints from the public.
Yet we are entering a Golden Age of Journalism. More journalism, real journalism, is being produced in this country and around the world than ever before.
The reason is simple. The Internet. This medium, the one you’re reading, has revolutionized journalism by letting anyone and everyone participate in it.
You don’t have to work for someone who buys ink by the barrel anymore, or bandwidth by the gigabit. Anyone can do journalism. Even TV journalism. When you ask questions, when you witness and share that witnessing, you are doing journalism.
Don’t let anyone tell you blogging isn’t journalism. (Journalism is a subset of blogging.) On story-after-story, over the last few years, we have seen "bloggers" way ahead of the so-called "mainstream media," unafraid to ask the tough questions, unafraid to take the time to sift the evidence, and willing to share their nascent work with others working the same stories.
We see it internationally, where GIs brought the war back home and bloggers put its terror into our living rooms while TV and newspapers pulled back. We’ve seen it throughout the nation, where bloggers have pushed scandals against national and state politicians. We’ve seen it on a local level, where small stories have been turned into big ones, thanks entirely to bloggers.
Yes, it’s a dangerous game. Everyone wants to get their side of every story out, and keep the other side from getting its side out. Yet so long as there is connectivity on both sides, both sides get their stories out.
There is an important lesson here which both sides in this debate — the censors and the advocates for blogging-journalism — have yet to fully appreciate.
The bloggers are winning. Resistance is futile. Life is becoming more transparent. No one can hide anymore. You can’t intimidate a few corporations anymore and make it all go away.
It’s time someone pointed this out.
I just did.
