Freedom Envy
Peggy Noonan at the Wall Street Journal characterizes the recent mainstream media backlash at bloggers over their role in Eason Jordan’s resignation as “a serious case of freedom envy.”
“Salivating morons.” “Scalp hunters.” “Moon howlers.” “Trophy hunters.” “Sons of Sen. McCarthy.” “Rabid.” “Blogswarm.” “These pseudo-journalist lynch mob people.”
This is excellent invective. It must come from bloggers. But wait, it was the mainstream media and their maidservants in the elite journalism reviews, and they were talking about bloggers!
Those MSMers have gone wild, I tell you! The tendentious language, the low insults. It’s the Wild Wild West out there. We may have to consider legislation.
When you hear name-calling like what we’ve been hearing from the elite media this week, you know someone must be doing something right. The hysterical edge makes you wonder if writers for newspapers and magazines and professors in J-schools don’t have a serious case of freedom envy.
The bloggers have that freedom. They have the still pent-up energy of a liberated citizenry, too. The MSM doesn’t. It has lost its old monopoly on information. It is angry.
Opinion Journal: The Blogs Must Be Crazy
Sounds about right to me. Bloggers lack two big constraints that the MSM has: medium, and bureaucracy. Those of you who don’t operate a blog might not know exactly how simple it is: open browser, type, click “Publish.” The information is instantly available, and there’s a good chance that thousands of people will read it. That is a tremendously empowering feeling.
The MSM also gets the gratification of an audience (a much bigger one), but they operate under constraints that make their power seem sluggish. For many journalists, their main method of disseminating information is old fashioned and slow. What is breaking news on blogs tonight will be yawn-worthy in the paper two days from now. Even if a journalist is lucky enough to catch a story right before the paper goes to print, there is still that pesky bureaucracy holding them back from instant publication and it very well may dictate what they can and cannot publish.
They are understandably jealous, and their name-calling is a symptom of that jealousy. “[T]he hounds are baying,” says Bret Stephens, also of the Wall Street Journal. “[S]uspended somewhere between meltdown and release,” he says of Michelle Malkin (who, to my amusement, requested that I put the quote at the top of her web page as a tagline.)
They envy our freedom. We envy their influence. The only difference is that while our influence is growing, they are as constrained as ever.
Update: Way to make it about sex, Glenn, you puppy-blending pervert.
What I find silly about these wild attacks on bloggers is that they ascribe some kind of power to them that they only have when they make true, cogent points in their criticisms. Who would be able to “hound” Eason Jordan out of his job if the charges were phony? CNN apparently had seen this tendency to make outrageous statements before and was fed up.
As for Bret Stephens, so much for the mystique of the “tough” reporter.
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