Thursday 26 April 2007

Blogs and the news agenda

After looking at Easongate I thought it would be appropriate to think about the blogosphere and it's effect on the news agenda. Clearly in the case of Eason Jordan, bloggers played a huge role in creating the news agenda.

It was a blog post that unearthed the controversy, and it was a mass collection of non-stop hounding through blogs that forced the head of a major cable network to resign. So, is this the end for the mainstream media? Not quite yet, but blogs have earned their place alongside it, and they for sure are here to stay.

Blogging is personal. Blogging is instant. Blogging is relentless. You set the agenda. As with Abovitz, you don't have to abide to journalistic codes and conventions, covering up the truth for the sake of it being 'off-the-record'. Before, blogging was seen as a tool to criticise what people were listening to and reading in the mainstream media. Bloggers would listen to what the MSM had to say, and through their blogs agree or disagree. Blogs were and probably still are seen as heavily critical to the MSM, creating tension between professional journalists and bloggers.

However, as we have seen with Eason Jordan, one cannot always rely on the MSM to deliver the goods. Often it's duty to give us the facts is hampered by some under pining agenda. Whether it be influenced by advertisers, government, whoever, the MSM have set 'THE NEWS AGENDA' for years. However, as evident through the cases discussed in class (Jordan, Trent etc.) blogging has allowed the little guy, the people, to set their own agenda, and chase the truth.

Some think of bloggers as a regulatory body. This may in some cases be true, however they have become so much more than that. Through their quest to uncover what they feel is being wrongly kept from them, or simply missed by the MSM, bloggers are helping to shape the news. Bloggers are gaining in stature, with hundreds of readers logging on for their daily dose of comment.

The instantaneous nature of blogs allows bloggers to react to a story as it happens. Leaving the papers in their wake, readers are forced online as stories break throughout the day, and can comment there and then on what the blog has published. One links the story to another, who links to another, and so the process goes, as the story gets thrown across the blogosphere. At each turn,with each post, with each comment, the story is shaped into something the MSM could never be able to create.

And now it seems everybody is having a go... even me! Seriously though, even the MSM companies and corporations have tested the water with their own blogs now. They are slowly becoming intergrated into the media as a whole. Whether bloggers like this is another thing, however it does go some way to restoring some power back to the people.

The MSM is no longer the gate keeper. It can't restrict access to what the people want in the ways it once could. Today, the MSM may even look towards bloggers for a story. The citizen journalist has become a necessity within the media, and in a world where people want their news more personal, more conversational and ultimately more accessible. This is the agenda the majority now seek, and is a product of the ever growing influence from blogging.

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