Liberals often complain about the mainstream media's unwillingness to state that many right-wing talking points are (supposedly) bogus and even bizarre. One such liberal, media critic Eric Alterman, wrote last year that "[o]ver and over, no matter what the issue—no matter how outlandish, illogical, or simply untrue the conservative argument has been—journalists create a sense of false equivalence between positions that rest on data and logic and those that don’t."
This past Sunday, Daily Kos featured writer Egberto Willies blasted the MSM for failing to expose alleged GOP lies about Obamacare and other health-care topics. Willies declared that the media's overall poor performance has brought about "an uninformed populace and a corrupted politics," but added that the good news is that truth-telling left-wing bloggers are riding to the rescue.
From his post (emphasis added):
...Americans seem more uninformed than ever. This can only be blamed on the sources America deems trustworthy...
...Reports by the traditional media about people negatively affected by the Affordable Care Act are generally debunked, sometimes within hours, usually within a few days. The problem is that by the time these stories have been debunked, millions have heard and believed them...
...Many times the debunking is done by informed bloggers who feel a patriotic responsibility to inform. They feel a responsibility to correct a seemingly corporate-driven misinformation campaign by the traditional news media...
Was it not the traditional media’s responsibility to research health care systems throughout the world when Republicans lied about the failures of health care systems in Canada, Great Britain and Europe in general? Bloggers [researched it]. Was the traditional news media not responsible for fact checking the stories of people who claimed to be helped or hurt by Obamacare? Bloggers did. Was it not the traditional news media’s responsibility to research the coal ash corporate and political corruption in North Carolina? Bloggers did.
If one is tasked or self-tasked to be the entity informing citizens, one...cannot be the medium used by politicians and/or the corporatocracy to indoctrinate. That is what members of the traditional news media have become...
News of the future must be crowd-sourced. No longer must Americans allow the few to be the arbiters of news or reality. It is time that the traditional news media is deemed irrelevant. They are. Bloggers have asserted their worth, and it is time that all of America is made aware as well.
