Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Northern Bloggers

David Warren in his essay "Pinged" on how the Internet and bloggers have transformed Canadian elections.
In short, the Internet has broken the stranglehold the Liberal Party had over sympathetic media, and created an information environment in which you had better be darned sure what you are saying is the strict truth, because there’s an army of fact-checkers out there. Moreover, an army that cannot easily be intimidated by off-the-record threats from Party lawyers, or made to desist by peer pressure. For even when (as we saw in the delayed release of Gomery testimony) a legal ban on publication can be obtained, the information simply passes through electronic space across the border, and we can all read the banned material on such sites as Captain’s Quarters from the USA.
This is, he writes, ". . . the Canadian election in which our “blogosphere” came of age."

Even if the Conservatives don't prevail in the upcoming election, the environment has changed enormously. Canadian media pretty much published the ad and gun registry scandals in a neutral fashion. It is bloggers who provided the outrage and indignation. You can say that media pretty much failed in their self-appointed role as guardians of the public trust. The word that comes to mind is "accomplice."

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