Billmon has a point, and it's about time we set the agenda
From his LA Times op-ed piece on blogging:
As blogs commercialize, they are tied ever closer to the mainstream media and its increasingly frivolous news agenda. The political blogosphere already has a bad habit of chasing the scandal du jour. This election season, that's meant a laser-like focus on such profound matters as the mysteries of Bush's National Guard service or whether John Kerry deserved his Vietnam War medals.
Meanwhile, more unsettling (and important) stories — like the Abu Ghraib prison scandal or the great Iraq weapons-of-mass-destruction snipe hunt — quietly disappear down the media memory hole. And bloggers either can't, or won't, dig them back out again. As the convergence with big media continues, I suspect there will be progressively less interest in trying.
Reading this reminds me of some email conversations I've had recently with a Loaded Mouth reader concerning Operation OUTROVE and, aside from this blog influencing Pandagon to link to Palast's original article, nobody seemed to give a shit about the story. Pandagon never followed up on it, and my research and conclusion piece which proves beyond a doubt that Bush is guilty of fostering corruption has gone largely unnoticed. Now I'm not going to take a "woe is me" attitude and apply a guilt trip to whose who haven't paid attention to my little shit blog because, let's face it, there are so many other stories about Bush out there that a bunch slip through the cracks. It doesn't surprise me that Operation OUTROVE suffered the same fate.
But why hasn't one of these stories surfaced and been linked to like wild fire on the left side of the blogosphere? The right wing blogs, led by Instapundit and Drudge, have done an excellent job of trumping up stories, essentially non-issues, where they get the whole right side of the blogosphere talking about it. That creates enough buzz to make the mainstream media pay attention to their story. Foxnews usually does so first, and then it can't be ignored be CNN and MSNBC, and suddenly instacrap becomes a national issue. While "Rathergate" is recognized as being the right blogosphere's first breakthrough, where they influenced the mainstream and brought CBS to it's knees, it's really the first high profile case where they've influenced the mainstream. Think about this: without Instapundit and his useful idiots, would anything the Swift Boat Vets had to say have even become a story worth mentioning?
The fact is that Instapundit, and the Republicans as a whole, set the agenda for what's reported in the mainstream media. Naturally, blogs are going to comment on what the mainstream media reports, but there's a huge difference between setting the agenda and following that agenda. The left side of the blogosphere, unfortunately, merely follows the agenda set forth by the Republicans. Led by Atrios, Kevin Drum, and Kos, among others, these blogs can't stop commenting about Swift Boat Vet and forged memos/Rathergate bullshit, non-issue "stories" whose sole purpose for being reported are to defame Kerry and keep his supporters on the defensive. And, just like when Instapundit talks about a story and everyone on the right links to it, when Atrios or Kos talk about a story, the left side of the blogosphere will link to it. So when they're put on the defensive, the rest of the left wing blogosphere follows.
In short, simply by commenting on these stories, the left wing blogosphere is placing itself on the defensive because we're not setting the agenda. Instead, we're only commenting on a preset agenda specifically designed to place us on the defensive. And I've got news for you, folks: If the left is constantly on the defensive, Bush is going to win the White House.
We're wasting our energy commenting on the right's flavor of the month scandal when we should be organizing our efforts to research, link to, and break stories which will set the mainstream media's attention against Bush. And when Billmon points out that we're dropped the ball on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the fact Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction, he's exactly correct. There are a lot of stories which we should be researching and should be linking to because they could place Bush on the defensive. But instead, these stories slip through the cracks. At times it can get pretty shameful. For example, it appears that I'm one of the only liberal bloggers who attempts to make the Genocide of Darfur a story. I haven't seen it mentioned on Kos or Atrios, although one would figure that such a tragic story would rise above partisan bickering. (Hell, it's one of the only issues Instapundit and I would agree upon, and at least he reports it.) I've been one of the only bloggers holding Bush's feet to the fire to do something about this crisis. Why hasn't anybody else on the left simply said, "Thousands of people are dying in Darfur and Bush could do something about it." Why? Not only does this place Bush on the defensive, but it might even save a few thousand lives in the process. But instead, it's all Swift Boat and Rathergate, all the time.
That's just one example. I could use my Operation OUTROVE reporting as another example. Here we have proof that Bush brokered a $23 million payoff to Ben Barnes, the man who could have killed his political career. I didn't research this story for shits and giggles, I researched it to give the left some ammo to put Bush on the defensive with. But instead, it's all Swift Boat and Rathergate, all the time.
Billmon's right, the leftwing blogosphere does not follow up on stories. I view this as a symptom of our inability to set the agenda of the mainstream media. The longer we're placed on the defensive and commenting on the right's bullshit stories, the longer it will take us to organize and claim the power that is ours. We have the power to influence the mainstream media and set the agenda, but do we have the power to recognize this and organize our efforts, follow up on stories, and do the research to break new ones? The clock is ticking, folks. We've got a little more than a month to get our shit together, otherwise we'll have another four years of the most most extreme administration this country has ever seen.
