It's Not About the Truth by Don Yaeger

Author:Don Yaeger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2007-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

Sheehan’s early work drew the attention of another group that played an integral role in this story’s development and its eventual outcome. Bloggers, a twenty-first-century new-media power, took to the Duke lacrosse case early, often, and with a vengeance.

The power of the blogger is slowly being acknowledged by the mainstream media. Their influence, on rare occasions, has actually outreached that of the media. One of the most notable examples of this is the now-infamous National Guard letter disparaging George W. Bush’s service during the 1970s. Dan Rather broke the story on CBS News, hailing it as a major scandal that was sure to turn the tide of the 2004 election against Bush. Bloggers quickly picked up the story and soon proved that the documents were, in fact, forgeries.

Bloggers were likewise responsible for exposing the untrue allegations, reported by CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan, that the U.S. military was killing journalists in the Middle East. The blogging efforts brought the situation into the national spotlight and the resulting outcry against such journalistic misconduct eventually caused Jordan to resign.

As the New York Times and Nancy Grace proved, there weren’t many highlights for those analyzing the media’s performance in coverage of the Duke lacrosse team case. But as the story played out, two did become apparent: the work of several bloggers and the consistent effort of the smallest newspaper on the beat—the student-run Duke Chronicle.

Many news outlets, recognizing the online trend, were beginning to start developing blogs of their own on their official websites. Sheehan recalled how the timing of the Duke story coincided with this upswing of interest: “The story broke right when we were getting our blogs off the ground. Newspapers are trying in their own way to be a more significant presence with up-to-the-minute news online. We just reorganized our entire newsroom to do this.”

Unfortunately, some bloggers used the anonymity offered by their medium to make outrageous claims and vitriolic accusations. Sheehan witnessed the trend firsthand. “When we first started really communicating more by email,” she said, “a lot, especially in the South, of the niceties of person-to-person conversation kind of flew out the window because people can just blast you by email. Even today people are stunned when I respond and I am like a nice person and say, thanks for your note. Then they often reply back, ‘Oh, my God, I am so sorry.’ I think the blogosphere, especially these guys, I don’t know if it’s a test of their manhood, but the more extreme, the more they can challenge the people who they think are the bad guys in this, the better. And there’s plenty of bad guys, so there’s plenty of people to go after. They try to get as far out there on that as they can; I think it increases their blog traffic.

“I will be curious to see what happens to some of these guys,” she continued. “I am always very tempted to reply back to some of them and ask what exactly

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.