Did criticism from the blogosphere really drive CNN's decision to fire Eason Jordan? While the blogosphere is divided between triumphalism and those who remain appropriately modest about our collective influence, the MSM also is increasingly split between those like Stuart Rothenberg (dismissal and disdain) and the LA Times' David Shaw (fearmongering). Shaw writes:
I'm all for the defenestration ? and perhaps even the decapitation ? of journalistic felons. Jayson Blair, Jack Kelley, Stephen Glass and their ilk are serial fabricators who betrayed their profession, their colleagues and our democratic society.
But I feel very differently about Eason Jordan, the chief CNN news executive who resigned this month amid a firestorm of criticism over remarks he made during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Much of the criticism of Jordan came from angry bloggers, and Jordan and his bosses at CNN caved in faster than you can say "Chicken Little."
Today, Glenn Reynolds writes of these remarks:
The funny thing ... is that the herd-mentality among media executives will probably make the "bloggers as irresistible force" idea truer, as the result of pieces like this one, than it was before.
I also suspect Shaw's views will eventually dominate within the MSM, rather than those of Rothenberg, albeit for a slightly different reason. Why? It is in the self-interest of journalists to believe that the blogosphere is a powerful lynch mob going after not only journalistic felons, but also those who commit misdemeanors, errors of judgment, or even innocent mistakes. By blaming powerful forces seeking to undercut them at every turn, rather than their own biases and incompetence when incidents occur like that involving Eason Jordan, the MSM avoids the need to engage in meaningful introspection. Instead of considering whether their problems are the result of their own conduct, they can claim that an angry mob unfairly lynched them.
Blaming others for one's misfortunes is always easier than considering whether one's own conduct may have caused them. So I expect the MSM to go right on whining about blogs, even if those of us in the blogosphere really don't have anywhere near the amount of influence we would like to think we possess.
