Web entrepreneur Arianna Huffington slammed old media at a political conference in New York today, assailing reporters for abandoning the pursuit of truth in favor of a "fake neutrality" and quailing in the face of government intimidation.
Even when traditional news organizations do break significant investigative stories, such as the Times' Pentagon propaganda article, Huffington said reporters still rush off to the next topic. As an alternative to this "attention deficit disorder" reporting, Huffington hailed the "obsessive compulsive disorder" tendencies of new media -- picking apart stories; blending research and activism; and pressing politicians to comment and act in response to news in an autocatalytic process that creates more news. That's what happened when the blogosphere seized on the Pentagon propaganda issue, eventually forcing late responses from Congress and presidential candidates, she noted. The same dynamics animate this week's netroots effort to fight the White House surveillance bill, building on past reporting and pressure to get Barack Obama on the record against retroactive amnesty for telecom companies.And author Clay Shirky, who addressed the same Personal Democracy Forum conference after Huffington, hit a similar theme, declaring that nowadays "media is not a source of information, it's a site of action."
Huffington also discussed some dark sides of the blogosphere, such as "vile" comments from people hiding their identities. Her "Internet newspaper" site, The Huffington Post, now has 30 part-time comment editors to patrol feedback. She added that her staff and volunteer bloggers are guided by a trio of new media values: transparency, accountability and community.
Ari Melber
Web entrepreneur Arianna Huffington slammed old media at a political conference in New York today, assailing reporters for abandoning the pursuit of truth in favor of a "fake neutrality" and quailing in the face of government intimidation.
Even when traditional news organizations do break significant investigative stories, such as the Times‘ Pentagon propaganda article, Huffington said reporters still rush off to the next topic. As an alternative to this "attention deficit disorder" reporting, Huffington hailed the "obsessive compulsive disorder" tendencies of new media — picking apart stories; blending research and activism; and pressing politicians to comment and act in response to news in an autocatalytic process that creates more news. That’s what happened when the blogosphere seized on the Pentagon propaganda issue, eventually forcing late responses from Congress and presidential candidates, she noted. The same dynamics animate this week’s netroots effort to fight the White House surveillance bill, building on past reporting and pressure to get Barack Obama on the record against retroactive amnesty for telecom companies.And author Clay Shirky, who addressed the same Personal Democracy Forum conference after Huffington, hit a similar theme, declaring that nowadays "media is not a source of information, it’s a site of action."
Huffington also discussed some dark sides of the blogosphere, such as "vile" comments from people hiding their identities. Her "Internet newspaper" site, The Huffington Post, now has 30 part-time comment editors to patrol feedback. She added that her staff and volunteer bloggers are guided by a trio of new media values: transparency, accountability and community.
—Ari Melber, the Net movement correspondent for The Nation, is blogging from the "Rebooting the System" conference of the Personal Democracy Forum, where he is a contributing editor and panel moderator.
Ari MelberTwitterAri Melber is The Nation's Net movement correspondent, covering politics, law, public policy and new media, and a regular contributor to the magazine's blog. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Contact Ari: on Facebook, on Twitter, and at amelber@hotmail.com. Melber is also an attorney, a columnist for Politico and a contributing editor at techPresident, a nonpartisan website covering technology’s impact on democracy. During the 2008 general election, he traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent. He previously served as a Legislative Aide in the US Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign. As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including including appearances on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, and NPR, on programs such as “The Today Show,” “American Morning,” “Washington Journal,” “Power Lunch,” "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," "The Joy Behar Show," “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and “The Daily Rundown,” among others. Melber has also been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, NYU, The Center for American Progress and many other institutions. He has contributed chapters or essays to the books “America Now,” (St. Martins, 2009), “At Issue: Affirmative Action,” (Cengage, 2009), and “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country,” (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004). His reporting has been cited by a wide range of news organizations, academic journals and nonfiction books, including the The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, National Review Online, The New England Journal of Medicine and Boston University Law Review. He is a member of the American Constitution Society, he serves on the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institute and lives in Manhattan.