Begin forwarded message:
From: Jeff Bone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Mon Mar 24, 2003 10:45:59 PM US/Pacific To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [SPORK?] The Rise of the Reporters
It's been evident (IMHO) for a long time that the "big story" of the 90s wasn't computers, or the Web, or buddy lists, or cell phones, or PDAs, or blogs, or any of the stuff us pure geeks probably immediately think of. Some of those stories might be the big stories of this decade --- but the effects of all of the above, really, on a global scale, were in the 90s wildly overstated.
The big story of the 90s went largely unreported --- because news itself isn't usually news. Seems to me that the big story of the 90s was the meteoric rise in global importance of television news networks in shaping world opinion, shaping the course of world events, and making the conduct of international relations a real-time endeavor. And of course, CNN really started this and came of age in the crucible of Baghdad '91. To an even greater extent, global media is coming of age in this current conflict.
This whole "embedding" thing has me totally fascinated. I heard a top Pentagon official on one of the networks a night or two ago talking about how they get real-time battle intel from these networks more often than through the chain of command. And the embedding thing isn't just our reporters: I'm watching Aaron Brown on CNN talking to reporters from many countries and outlets --- including Muslim media and *France* --- that are embedded with our forces. (FWIW, the Arabic news networks have forces embedded w/ Iraqi forces, too. Ironically, the viewers of Al Jazeera and some of the other 9 or so similar networks *potentially* have better access to more balanced information than we do.)
Real-time, largely non-partisan (face it, most at least try for some level of objectivity, though they succeed to degrees according to different agendas; but in general their value is diminished to the extent that they editorialize and spin the bitstream) private sector intelligence agencies.
And they've become almost sacrosanct --- they go everywhere, see everything, say whatever, and are pretty much untouched and unhindered by the national collective organisms and interests they operate within. Bizarre.
Truly fascinating. Powerful force for good. Powerful force for evil. Suspicion warranted, but I can't help but feel kind of awed. A 30-minute scan of CNN, Fox, etc. today --- supplemented with broad reading of international online newspapers to triangulate and balance --- probably gives any one of us access to more information of equal or superior quality than the information that intelligence officers in this or any other country had from a year's intelligence gathering two decades ago. We're more immediately and better informed more than the guys that made global policy during our parents' era.
Wow. Go CNN, et. al. ;-)
jb
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