The
Rational Argumentator
The New Era of Decentralized Media
Originally published on GrasstopsUSA.com.
This election season differs dramatically from any that came
before it. The stakes are higher, the debate is more vibrant, but most
importantly, the old mainstream media are no longer in control. In early 2005,
the beginnings of the Internet media revolution were already showing, as
fact-finding by hundreds of bloggers exposed a falsified CBS story about
President Bush’s military record and brought down the seemingly impregnable
career of Dan Rather. In 2006, in another triumph for media transparency,
bloggers discovered Reuters’ deliberate doctoring of photographs from
It is indeed astounding to witness Presidential debates co-hosted by YouTube and some candidates raising millions of dollars online in a single day, without the involvement of their official campaigns. A sizable contingent of small, independent reporters now visits the sites of the debates and interviews the candidates as well as the people on the streets. Meanwhile, the opportunities for writing and publishing online continue to grow at an accelerated rate. With hundreds of services, it costs no money to publish articles or initiate a blog or online magazine of one’s own. Indeed, over the past two years, opportunities to make money by writing online have skyrocketed. The old media now compete with thousands of informed, educated, and intelligent independent writers and broadcasters.
What are the implications of the growing decentralization of the media, both on the political landscape and on the skills necessary for the citizen who wishes to effectively participate in civic life?
First, it is becoming much more difficult for any public figure to tell a lie and get away with it. Thousands of individuals are ready to check and double-check the facts and statements presented by any politician or journalist – and to publish the truth online for all to see. In this election there has already been a substantial focus on the glaring dissonance between the principles some candidates espouse and their record of consistently violating these principles. Today, ordinary citizens can readily find out all the votes of a particular candidate when he was a Senator or Representative, or the policies he enacted when he was Governor. American voters generally do not take kindly to hypocrisy and flip-flopping, and this time they will insist that each party nominate candidates with a record of actually practicing what they preach.
Furthermore, the public has ceased to have an expectation of the old mainstream media as sources of received wisdom. Gone are the days when a column by Walter Lippmann could sway millions of Americans to vote for Eisenhower instead of Stevenson. The news anchors and TV pundits today are just a few voices among a vast multitude, and their pronouncements are widely scrutinized. No longer can the decisions of a handful of journalists determine the content of “the news” or of what the public knows and believes about the current political situation. The old mainstream media have been slow to adjust to the transition and still believe that they can cherry-pick “frontrunners” in this election. Their plummeting ratings and audiences testify to the contrary. Nor are they doing well financially. The stock price of the New York Times, for instance, was halved during 2007 alone. In the meantime, the trends in the opinion polls and campaign contributions show that Americans generally tend to support the candidates whose principles they agree with – not the candidates whom mainstream media pundits consider capable of winning.
The decentralization of the media has revolutionized the political arena by bringing vastly increased competition to the market of ideas. Access to large amounts of capital is no longer necessary to get an audience, so the barriers to entry have been lowered dramatically. On the other hand, with thousands of competitors, no one of them is indispensable from the consumers’ point of view. Thus, the new market of ideas places a tremendous premium on truthfulness and persuasiveness as requirements for cultivating an audience. If one online commentator argues poorly or lies, there will be fifty others that argue better and present more reliable information.
In this rapidly dawning new era, consumers of information need to understand that automatic reliability no longer exists. One can no longer trust the pronouncements of any one particular public figure or private individual – even one who has rightly earned a reputation for honesty and accuracy. All people are fallible, and any given online commentator may be a wonderful source on some issues and a poor source on others. The best approach to becoming well-informed by consulting decentralized media is to double-check one’s information, use multiple sources, and think for oneself. The individual reader and viewer is not inferior to those who produce the information he reads and views; he can no longer hold the blind and unwarranted conviction that the judgments of the media “elites,” “experts,” and “authorities” are superior to his own. Instead, he can critically examine any pronouncements he cares to explore and then make up his own mind – and perhaps share his thoughts with the rest of us.
This
election will turn out differently from the others. The new decentralized
media, having already emerged, are now unstoppable. The old mainstream media
will either finally get a reality check and adjust to the new state of affairs,
or – more likely – will rapidly collapse into oblivion without ever truly
recognizing why. A much more dynamic, independently minded, well-informed, and
politically active body of ordinary citizens will determine the outcome of this
election – and you are welcome to be one of them.
G. Stolyarov II is a science
fiction novelist, independent philosophical essayist, poet, amateur
mathematician, composer, contributor to Enter Stage Right, Le Quebecois
Libre, Rebirth of Reason, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Senior Writer for The Liberal Institute, weekly columnist for GrasstopsUSA.com,
and Editor-in-Chief of The Rational
Argumentator, a magazine championing the
principles of reason, rights, and progress. Mr. Stolyarov also publishes his
articles on Helium.com and
Associated
Content to assist the spread of rational ideas. His newest science fiction
novel is Eden against the
Colossus. His latest non-fiction treatise
is A Rational
Cosmology. His most recent play is Implied Consent. You can also view his YouTube Videos.
Mr. Stolyarov can be contacted at gennadystolyarovii@yahoo.com.
This TRA feature has been edited in accordance with TRA’s Statement of Policy.
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Learn about Mr. Stolyarov's novel, Eden against the Colossus, here.Read Mr. Stolyarov's new comprehensive treatise, A Rational Cosmology, explicating such terms as the universe, matter, space, time, sound, light, life, consciousness, and volition, here.