Mad Hot off the Presses Net ~ Bush White House Reads the Blogs

The White House has acknowledged the power of the blogs as I have here, here and here - it's been one Gutenberg moment after another. I am not surprised by this. The blogs have become the tail wagging the dog. Apparently the White House agrees. How lovely to see Presidential acknowledgment -- mad hot, eh?

Drudge reports here on comments made by President Bush and his top advisers on the importance of blogs, and what the CBS memo scandal showed about mainstream media. President Bush said, “the amazing thing about this world we live in is that there’s a kind of free-flowing, kind of bulletin board of ideas and thoughts out there in the ether space, sometimes landing on somebody’s desk and sometimes not, but always available. It’s a very interesting period.“ 

BUSH CHEERS DECLINE OF MAINSTREAM MEDIA, RISE OF ALTERNATIVE PRESS

ROVE SLAMS DAN RATHER: NOT A 'SERIOUS' REPORTER

President Bush, for the first time, is hailing the rise of the alternative media and the decline of the mainstream media, which he now says “conspired” to harm him with forged documents.

“I find it interesting that the old way of gathering the news is slowly but surely losing market share,” Bush said in an exclusive interview for the new book STRATEGERY. “It’s interesting to watch these media conglomerates try to deal with the realities of a new kind of world.”

[STRATEGERY was ranked #5 on AMAZON.COM's sales chart early Tuesday morning.]

For example, journalist Dan Rather left the anchor chair at CBS News after Internet reporters revealed he had used forged documents to criticize Bush’s military record in September 2004. The forgeries, which Bush now calls a conspiracy, ended up helping his reelection campaign, he acknowledged in the Oval Office interview.

“It looks like somebody conspired to float false documents,” the president tells author Bill Sammon. “And I was amazed about it. I just couldn’t believe that would be happening [and] then it would become the basis of a fairly substantial series of news stories.”

He added: “Then there was a backlash to it. I mean, a lot of people were angry that this could have happened. A lot of Americans are fair people and they viewed this as patently unfair. So in a funny way, I guess it inured to our benefit, when it was all said and done.”

The episode, known as “Memogate,” inoculated Bush against further scrutiny of his National Guard record for the duration of the presidential campaign.

Developing...

Rove said Rather’s eagerness to broadcast obviously forged documents proves he is “no serious reporter.” As for Rather’s insistence, to this day, that the documents are real, Rove said: “That’s really bias.”

Memogate has helped accelerate the decline of the mainstream media, generally defined as CBS, NBC, ABC, The New York Times and other establishment news outlets. “I think what’s healthy is that there’s no monopoly on the news,” Bush said. “There’s competition. There’s competition for the attention of, you know, 290 million people, or whatever it is.

Having long been pilloried by the mainstream media, Bush now finds the rise of the alternative media nothing less than revolutionary.

“It’s the beginning of the twenty-first century; it also happens to be the beginning of—or near the beginning—of a revolution in newsgathering and dissemination,” he said. “Not in news making—that tends to be pretty consistent.”

Rove considers Memogate a watershed in the rise of the alternative media.

“The whole incident in the fall of 2004 showed really the power of the 'blogosphere',” he said in his West Wing office.

“Because in essence you had now, an army of self-appointed experts looking over the shoulder of the mainstream media and bringing to bear enormously sophisticated skills,” he added.

Still, Rove cautioned that the Internet’s political potential has a darker side.

“There is so much ugliness and viciousness and fundamental untruths that the blogosphere transmits,” he lamented. “It also is a vehicle for ugly rumors, for scurrilous personal attacks, an avenue for the creation of urban legends which are deeply corrosive of the political system and of people’s faith in it.”

Yes Mr. Rove but the Army of Davids stand at the ready to correct and address those very inaccuracies. KOS, Kos kidz, DU will always spew their invective but at least there is an immediate counter balance. They may have George Soros and his Air America slush fund, but we have right. We have fact, truth and now we have an important means of communication to get the word out there. We are the messengers, think Paul Revere.

The trend is undeniable...According to a new study released from Outsell today, the research and advisory firm based in Burlingame, Calif., found that  newspapers are lagging as the dominant source for national information.  28% of those surveyed said they get their national news from online sites (and this is just the beginning of the revolution -- just the beginning.) 71% of those surveyed said they get their national news from broadcast news shows and cable TV, while only 33% said they get it from newspapers.

It's nothing you don't already know if you are here in the Atlas sphere but it is still a  delicious read never the less.

Uh, can I get my White House Press credentials now?  I wanna sit next to Helen Thomas and whisper sweet objectivist musings in her good ear.

UPDATE: Speaking of power blogging, my partner in crime , Confederate Yankee is  guestblogging over at the Washington Post here - you go Bob

More Powerblogging - stuff you just won't see in the MSM- Poland Introduces "Martyrs of Our Time" Ad Campaign  here

Comments

[red river]

Pamela,

I think you will get your creds one day. Just hope you are not as old as Helen Thomas when you do.

[Pamela]

ouch! me too

don't mind the old as much as the ugg

[Thomas Carney]

Pamela, don't worry, when you are Helen Thomas's age, you will still look fantastic.

[wxjames]

The MSM are the personification of pathetic.
First, Katrina misreporting, then Dubai Ports World misreporting, and now, CNN inflates the deaths in Iraq, and CBS inflates it's anti-Bush poll. What misinformation will tomorrow bring.
Who really cares ? I quit them years ago.

[tele64]

Uh, can I get my White House Press credentials now? I wanna sit next to Helen Thomas and whisper sweet objectivist musings in her good ear.

Ugh, I wouldn't want to get that close to her! Wee!

[Evil Progressive]

Approval ratings:

Your lying sack of shit of a President: 34%

Corrupt Republican-controlled Congress: 28%

Evil lower form of life Cheney: 18%

Zogby poll: 72% of the troops want to be out of Iraq within a year. I cannot wait for you, chickenhawks, to smear the troops as America-haters and terrorist-lovers.

You radical right-wingers are in the minority. Democracy triumphs again against absolutism! The People are speaking out!

Do you feel lonely out there yet? Stock up on Kool-Aid, you supporters of torturing, greedy, corrupt, criminal, and incompetent, thieves. You are going to need it!

[Kool Kurt]

Do really think some geek sitting his or her fat ass in front of a computer all day dashing off lame opnions and Googling for "facts" is on the same level as journalisim? Do these words mean anything to you "sources", "interviews", "photography", "objectivity", "ethics", "statistics"?
Somebody has to get in the trenches, go to the front lines in places like Iraq, Darfur, and New Orleans and objectively report on issues that they have done research on. For that I look to journalists.
If you are going to get your information from blogs you might as well read the Weekly World News. something I'm sure the Bush team would be happy to encourage.

[JB]

"Do these words mean anything to you "sources", "interviews", "photography", "objectivity", "ethics", "statistics"? "

Ask the same of the mainstream media.