Ben Smith’s apology at The Politico for having announced that John Edwards would suspend his presidential campaign underscores both the new power — and pitfalls — of this Brave New Era of communications and media. In spite of Ben’s reasonable, understandable explanation about sources, later test results, etc., the underlying reality is that the rapid-fire, get-it-out-first nature of the internet played a role in putting a false story out there.
This “race for a scoop” mentality is not some modern innovation, of course; the MSM press has been trying to out-scoop one another always.
Added to that, though, is the undeniable truth that had Polimom (or some other low-profile blogger) written that post, it wouldn’t have gone viral. In fact, nobody would have noticed at all — at least, not until well after John and Elizabeth Edwards had held their press conference.
This incident is proof-positive that at least some of the blogosphere has fully arrived. Judging from the way this played out (CNN and Reuters both evidently picked up the story from The Politico), the pundits have been right; some blogs are indeed part of the media flow now.
But is that a good thing? Or maybe what I mean to ask is… Does the blogosphere have enough maturity and credibility to responsibly manage so much power?
Because make no mistake about it — this is very potent.
There’s been a great deal of blogospheric naval gazing, with accompanying proclamations that “we” are the new face of journalism… or even that traditional journalism is an outmoded, archaic dinosaur.
That may very well be true. If it is, though, then the old adage of “Think Twice, Speak Once” could use some dusting-off in preparation for its revival.
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Others writing:
Ezra Klein at Tapped
David Corn
CBS’ Public Eye (Brian Montopoli), who writes:
The larger question here is this: Why rush out a story like this at all, especially as the press conference was less than an hour away? Is the bump in traffic really worth risking not getting it right?