Palin and the future of the media model
There's a reason why Mickey Kaus is on the Rainy Day blogroll and Arianna Huffington is not. Today, Kaus confirmed his role as pundit par excellence with a brilliant reading of l'affaire Palin and its implications. Usually terse, Kaus allows himself space to reveal the death of a media paradigm and delineate the three models of the past, present and future faction landscape.
Model One: There's the press, and the public. The press only prints "facts" that are checked and verified. That's all the public ever finds out about. The press functions as "gatekeeper."
Model Two: Model One broke down with the rise of blogs, which (along with tabloids and cable) often discuss rumors that are not "verified." The public finds out about these rumors, as rumors. And it turns out that blogging obsessively about rumors is a pretty good way to smoke out the truth (see, e.g., Dan Rather).
Kaus says that "The Edwards scandal did Model Two in. For months, the MSM failed to report the increasingly plausible rumors of John Edwards' extramarital affair even as it became the widespread topic of conversation in blogs, in the National Enquirer, and among political types. The disconnect turned out to be painfully embarrassing for the MSM, especially when the rumors were finally 'verified' with Edwards' confession." And this brings him to the "Drudgian world" we are in, going forward.
Model Three: I think, making the next logical leap, to a model in which unverified rumors about public figures are discussed and assessed not just in the blogosphere or the unrespectable tabs but in the MSM itself. I say welcome! With NYT reporters and bloggers all openly discussing unverified reports,, whatever is true will become un-unverified that much faster. And the public is proving, by and large, to be quite capable of distinguishing between stories that are true and rumors that are still being investigated. We're not quite there yet -- the unverified rumors that Palin had faked her pregnancy were printed in the MSM, but the McCain campaign itself gave the MSM implicit permission by saying it was releasing the news of Gov. Palin's daughters real pregnancy in order to scotch the fake pregnancy speculations of bloggers.
And a lovely touch at the finish: "They waited with Edwards. They don't want to go through that again. It helps, of course, that this week's rumors involve a Republican." All we need now is an up-front declaration by the sources "of record" that have embraced Model Three. Until they do, we should be wary of what they print or broadcast. And they should also let us know when they they are taking sides. You know: a banner or button saying "This is a pro-Obama" or "This is an anti-Palin" report.
