Driving a Stake into the Heart of the Mainstream Media

Peggy Noonan has nailed an issue, again, as only she can do. Here are some excerpts from her latest editorial, in which she discusses Rathergate and the busting of the mainstream media monopoly in America:

The Rathergate Report is a watershed event in American journalism not because it changes things on its own but because it makes unavoidably clear a change that has already occurred. And that is that the mainstream media's monopoly on information is over. That is, the monopoly enjoyed by three big networks, a half dozen big newspapers and a handful of weekly magazines from roughly 1950 to 2000 is done and gone, and something else is taking its place. That would be a media cacophony. But a cacophony in which the truth has a greater chance of making itself clearly heard...

The MSM [mainstream media] rose because it had a monopoly. And it fell because it lost that monopoly...

What broke [the monopoly]? We all know. Rush Limbaugh did, cable news did, the antimonolith journalists who rose with Reagan did, the internet did, technology did, talk radio did, Fox News did, the Washington Times did. When the people of America got options, they took them. Conservative arguments rose, and liberal hegemony fell.

All this has been said before but this can't be said enough: The biggest improvement in the flow of information in America in our lifetimes is that no single group controls the news anymore...

Is there a difference between the bloggers and the MSM journalists? Yes. But it is not that they are untrained eccentrics home in their pajamas. (Half the writers for the Sunday New York Times are eccentrics home in their pajamas.) It is that they are independent and allowed to think their own thoughts. It is that they have autonomy and can assign themselves stories, and determine on their own the length and placement of stories. And it is that they are by and large as individuals more interesting than most MSM reporters...

Only 20 years ago, when you were enraged at what you felt was the unfairness of a story, or a bias on the part of the storyteller, you could do this about it: nothing. You could write a letter...

The most successful bloggers aren't bringing bluster to the debate, they're bringing facts--font sizes, full quotes, etc. They're bringing facts and points of view on those facts that the MSM before this could ignore, and did ignore. They're bringing a lot to the debate, and changing the debate by what they bring. They're doing what excellent reporters would do...

The same change is even beginning to happen right here in Rhode Island. Information is power and information is now beginning to flow more freely. The facts about how high taxes in our state unnecessarily burden working families and retirees is now becoming more public. How those high taxes are driven by sweetheart deals where outrageous demands by public sector unions are agreed to by spineless politicians and bureaucrats - this, too, is becoming more public.

Isn't freedom wonderfully liberating? People committed to empirical facts and doing right by all citizens have nothing to fear. People committed to sweetheart deals do have something to fear - because both facts and history are not on their side.

Change - irreversible change - is beginning to happen. Let the real competition for the best ideas get underway here in Rhode Island and all across America.