Citizen-Media-Ethos

The german information-technology news magazine heise.de published an interesting article in their offspring Telepolis on the rising power of bloggers and their Scorching Rage. The author Thomas Pany expresses the struggle of the classic Mainstream-Media against the blogger’s Citizen-Media by using the example of the former CNN Eason Jordan who claimed on a press conference that 12 journalists were shot by US-troops‘ friendly fire in Iraq. The classic Mainstream-Media journalists never said a word on this note, but one of the attendants of the press conference, Rony Abovitz, wrote an article in his blog. As I reported earlier, the authors of blogs are used to facts. Instead of searching for the reason behind a statement, they re-print the statement and use the most deadly weapon to crush statements in its root – their personal opinion renders facts in different lights than expected. In the end, as Pany writes, the protagonists of Citizen-Media have won an important moral victory over the journalistic methods of the Mainstream-Media: Reporting the blunt truth.

Tags: Citizen-Media, Heise, Jordangate, Mainstream-Media