Hugh Hewitt, Sayer of Funny Things
"A delusion is something that people believe in despite a total lack of evidence."
Richard Dawkins
On April 23, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, held on the UCLA campus, hosted a panel on the impact of bloggers on the media. The panelist were Ken Auletta, Hugh Hewitt, Arianna Huffington, David Shaw (who moderated) and Geoffrey Stone.
Hewitt said, “ All of the gates are down. There are no more gatekeepers.”
Balderdash. So far, there have been a handful of blogs that have achieved some recognition in the non-blog media. Those blogs are all political. Most are written by people who were already professional writers, pundits or members of the chattering class. There are exceptions, like Daily Kos, who was a nobody before his blog. You’ve heard about these blogs, if you have heard at all, because writers and reporters in mainstream media outlets have picked up on them and given them recognition. That is a classic gatekeeper function. And Huffington noted that bloggers need the mainstream media to feed off of.
Arianna Huffington also engaged in hyperbole. “The blogosphere is the greatest breakthrough in journalism since Thomas Paine broke onto the scene.”
After Auletta, Huffington and Stone criticized the major media's failure to scrutinize the claims that constituted Bush's rationale for the invasion of Iraq, Hewitt said, “All of these issues were put before the American people in November and George Bush won an enormous victory. Michael Barone counts it” - interrupted by derisive laughter and booing from the audience - “I know, I know. Michael Barone counts it as one of the most significant American elections in terms of realignment since Harding’s.”
And we all know how well that worked out. Only in the mind of a reflexive partisan like Hugh Hewitt can a three percent margin become an enormous victory.
Richard Dawkins
On April 23, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, held on the UCLA campus, hosted a panel on the impact of bloggers on the media. The panelist were Ken Auletta, Hugh Hewitt, Arianna Huffington, David Shaw (who moderated) and Geoffrey Stone.
Hewitt said, “ All of the gates are down. There are no more gatekeepers.”
Balderdash. So far, there have been a handful of blogs that have achieved some recognition in the non-blog media. Those blogs are all political. Most are written by people who were already professional writers, pundits or members of the chattering class. There are exceptions, like Daily Kos, who was a nobody before his blog. You’ve heard about these blogs, if you have heard at all, because writers and reporters in mainstream media outlets have picked up on them and given them recognition. That is a classic gatekeeper function. And Huffington noted that bloggers need the mainstream media to feed off of.
Arianna Huffington also engaged in hyperbole. “The blogosphere is the greatest breakthrough in journalism since Thomas Paine broke onto the scene.”
After Auletta, Huffington and Stone criticized the major media's failure to scrutinize the claims that constituted Bush's rationale for the invasion of Iraq, Hewitt said, “All of these issues were put before the American people in November and George Bush won an enormous victory. Michael Barone counts it” - interrupted by derisive laughter and booing from the audience - “I know, I know. Michael Barone counts it as one of the most significant American elections in terms of realignment since Harding’s.”
And we all know how well that worked out. Only in the mind of a reflexive partisan like Hugh Hewitt can a three percent margin become an enormous victory.
posted by Peter L. Winkler | 12:18 AM
1 Comments:
I was there. Hewitt drew the great ire of the crowd with his blogfather act. Deserdedly so.
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