The blog swarm Chris Matthews never saw coming

January 22, 2007
Media Matters for America

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200801220003

When Chris Matthews' long-winded monologue at the opening of the January 17 Hardball program eventually touched down with an apology to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) for the way the cable talker had been treating the candidate on the air, the moment represented an unmistakable victory for the liberal blogosphere.

By not only getting Matthews to apologize, but by also forcing the rest of the press -- post-New Hampshire -- to back off its, at-times, overtly sexist coverage of a prominent Democratic contender, the blogs have already had more impact on how the traditional press covers this presidential campaign than they did during the entire 2004 White House run.

...

It's true that liberal bloggers do not have access to the same levers of power their conservative counterparts do; the way partisan pals at Fox News or National Review or The Wall Street Journal editorial page will often parrot the latest right-wing blogger outrage, no matter how half-baked it is.

But the Tweety Effect, as the Matthews controversy was dubbed online, illustrated how the Beltway press is increasingly susceptible to pressure applied by the netroots, especially when the offenses are as egregious as Matthews'. And that could have enormous impact as the general election unfolds this year.

The Matthews blog swarm -- a viral uprising from the netroots -- was hardly the first of the campaign season. In fact, it was 52 weeks ago that bloggers helped lead the charge to knock down the bogus right-wing meme that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) had been educated in a madrassa, while growing up in Indonesia. In that instance, CNN also played a starring role in debunking the Fox News madrassa propaganda.

"We'll be Watching You."

now we have to watch both. (or not, I don't like their advertising)

I couldn't watch CNN if I wanted to since the assholes filter requests from Linux.

There's an article about (Please! Don't vomit!) Katie Couric, which, despite the profound triviality of its focus, had a couple of great points.

Chief among them: the fact that people don't turn in to the CBS Evening News to get the news. They tune in to get a performance of the news. And it's not the only show offering news-as-performance, and a critical mass of the general public has pretty much figured this out.

Chris who?