The Blogosphere: Progressive Echo Chamber?

It was opening night of the GOP 30-hour judicial filibuster, just the kind of idiocy bound to be good for a few laughs in the loose network of online political journals known as the Blogosphere. The Republicans did not disappoint, allowing an internal memo to escape revealing that they were literally orchestrating their dramatic walk into the Capitol with - you guessed it - Fox News.

But that would not be the final humiliation for the Republicans. The blogger Atrios, who boasts a staggering 40,000 visits a day despite not even giving his name, got wind of a little pet project Majority Leader Bill Frist was concocting, and casually posted a 5-word entry at 2:12 PM entitled Dr. Frist Wants Your Opinion:

Go give it to him.

The post was typical of Atrios' relaxed, sardonic tone, for when the reader clicked on the hyperlink they found themselves on Frist's website. Frist was attempting to gather ammunition for the 30-hour debate (meant to protest the Dems' filibuster of four judicial nominees) by posting a “poll” on his website asking:

Should the president's nominees to the federal bench be allowed an up-or-down vote on confirmation as specified in the Constitution?

That Frist would consider the numbers from such an absurdly biased question, taken on his own website even to be worth tallying was laughable in itself. But when Atrios' patrons dutifully voted to deny the nominees their “Constitutional” rights, the joke became literally at Bill Frist's expense. At the time of this author's visit, the poll showed over 70% voting against Frist's engineered answer. One can imagine the befuddlement of the dissenting 30%, who undoubtedly represented the hard-line Christian right sector of the Republican base to which the Republican theatrics were meant to appeal.

But it did not end there. Frist took down the poll (for the second time, having started the count over the first), and at 11:28 PM Atrios put up a post entitled Flippity Floppity:

So, Frist has changed the question *yet again* (without resetting the poll numbers). Once again, once the poll started going against him, he inverted the meaning. It now asks:

Should the Senate minority block the body's Constitutional duty to provide the President's judicial nominees with an up or down vote?

This really isn't appropriate for the Majority Leader.

Indeed, if there was little room left to make the question more biased originally, Frist had used it all. But Atrios readers continued the flood, and again Miguel Estrada and Priscilla Owens were stripped of their rights in a landslide.

Within an hour, according to the congressional record, Senator Harry Reid (leader of the Democrats in the 30-hour spectacle) took the Senate floor. On the wings of C-SPAN, he floated the following statement into the homes of every loyal Pat Robertson follower across the country:

“Even the majority leader's Web site indicates that what is going on here is absolutely wrong.”

The Dems had already done well in establishing the entire exercise as a circus and profound waste of time, but Reid's statement cemented the tone of embarrassment, and ultimately it would become clear that if anything, the Republicans' tactics had backfired.

If you find yourself amazed at the power of the blogosphere in this particular instance, rest assured that it is only the tip of the iceberg. David Brooks, who joined the New York Times op-ed page with a reputation as one of the few neocons with intellectual integrity, has seen his reputation dwindle rapidly under the scrutiny of the blogosphere. When blogger Josh Marshall (who is also a columnist for The Hill) took Brooks to task for implying that any use of the word “neoconservative” was in fact an anti-Semitic slur, the post was published as an article in the Star Tribune, and soon enough Brooks found himself issuing a bumbling apology, which, of course, was instantly scattered throughout the blogosphere.

On the other hand, “So what?” you might ask, who cares if a bunch of media junkies engaged in some intellectual masturbation amongst themselves at Brooks' expense? In answer to that question, simply read this passage from Jack Shafer in Slate.

When Sunday's Washington Post gave Page One, above-the-fold treatment to the Novak-Wilson-Plame triangle, it bestowed official Washington scandal status upon the story, sending the rest of the press corps to the blogosphere and Nexis to catch up with what had been a slow-moving story.

Shafer's claim is confirmed by the escalating infiltration of bloggers into mainstream media sources such as Howie Kurtz's “Media Notes” in the Washington Post, as well as the hiring of bloggers such as Matthew Yglesias by large publications like The American Prospect (Yglesias has since been nicknamed “Big Media Matt”).

The explanation of how no-name bloggers can earn the respect of the famously “elite” mainstream press lies in the fact that compared to other pundits, bloggers are impeccably sourced. In fact, the meat of virtually every post for successful bloggers generally consists of the key paragraphs of stories from legitimate news stories that fell through the cracks in mainstream dialogue. Thus, the gist of a blogger's point becomes virtually incontrovertible.

The Echo Chamber

The Republican network of high-price think tanks, conservative columnists, radio talk show hosts, and cable news talking heads (including the entirety of Fox News), often referred to collectively as the “Republican echo chamber,” has received a fair amount of attention over the past few years, and for good reason. Two recent stories illustrate the power and efficiency of the network.

First, when Move On allowed two ads comparing Bush to Hitler on its website, the slip was pounced on by the RNC, who took note and pushed the story with all of its muscle to the press. As is the usual process, the story was first picked up by conservative sources, who screamed it at the top of their lungs and have since never mentioned the organization without also mentioning the ads. Then the echo chamber and the RNC began to press mainstream outlets on why they were not covering the story, with the perennial charges of liberal media bias at least on the tip of their tongues. The mainstream media obviously capitulated, and even the country's largest newspapers ran stories solely dedicated to the ads (which of course never would have aired anyway and fared poorly in the contest). In the current atmosphere, this was a crippling blow to what had been the left's most effective grassroots organization of the past two years.

The second example revolves around General Wesley Clark. This time the initial yelp into the echo chamber was provided by a unique member of the club, The Drudge Report. Matt Drudge, who gained notoriety for breaking damaging stories on Clinton, is a sort of early incarnation of the blogger. The differences are that the format of his site resembles more an alternative news presentation, and more importantly, he often provides substantial original content from a wide range of sources inside the conservative establishment. The fact that he has a large audience (also including journalists) and posts original content, but also lacks the accountability of a legitimate news source, positions Drudge for the pivotal place in the echo chamber that he has. Recently the RNC dug up some Congressional testimony from Wes Clark leading up to the war. Excerpts were sent to Matt Drudge, which seemed to indicate that Clark supported the administration's arguments, and the mainstream press, apparently lacking in editing departments, ran with it. It would later be revealed, in no small part from the work of Josh Marshall, that the testimony was taken egregiously out of context, the words themselves were actually altered slightly to change meaning, and that in fact Clark's entire testimony was meant as the opposition argument with Richard Perle taking the pro-war side. But while the truth is now on the table, the damage has already been done: thus the beauty of the RNC echo chamber. If 50% of voters hear the lie, and only 10% hear the correction, an RNC victory has been won.

This marks the first difference between the Republican echo chamber and the blogosphere, since bloggers rely almost exclusively on well established, credible sources for their information. But more generally, it should have always been clear that a progressive echo chamber would not resemble its conservative counterpart. Conservative think tanks, as well as the Republican Party itself have become, essentially, financial investments, and good ones at that. A $2,000 donation to the Bush campaign has at least a 50% chance of returning $360,000 in tax cuts alone, not to mention relaxed environmental and labor regulations. To say that a donation will help secure government contracts is not enough; with nine out of the top ten contracts in Iraq going to donors, it appears that a donation is necessary. Anything short of the full $2000 is bad business, pure and simple. So Soros aside, there was never much chance that progressives could compete with the kind of money streaming through the conservative machinery (roughly $1 billion over the last decade).

Instead, the progressives' best hope has probably always been something very close to the blogosphere: individual citizens taking it upon themselves to utilize all tools and time at their disposal to make their voices heard. President Bush, with his heavy-handed bully pulpit tactics (including the use of 9/11 to bludgeon the opposition), his tendency to propose more money for the rich as the solution for all of the nation's problems, and his persistent assertion of certainty in intelligence which was dubious at the time and now appears to be certainly bogus, have caused these citizens to drift inevitably towards movement as a means to convert the small acts of millions into a massive political force. It was this movement that created MoveOn.org, the Dean campaign, and now the blogosphere. Move On represents a framework of the movement more than it does a lobbying arm, and Dean was never the leader of it- just the only member who happened to be running for president. If Kerry manages to take the race, it will only be because in the final days before the Iowa caucuses, he too was accepted after months of banging on the door. (For an interesting take that may change your feeling on Dean's “yawp”, see this American Prospect post, which was also picked up by a campaign media criticism blog run by the Columbia Journalism Review)

What elevates the blogosphere from top-notch media filter to bona fide echo chamber is the vast web connecting the different bloggers of reciprocation links in which they provide links to each other, and by linking to specific posts with additional information or analysis or even just to spread the word of a particularly good find. Most blogs also provide a space for comments that often evolve into a discussion of several hundred readers, many providing information and other articles themselves. Some of the bigger blogs such as Daily Kos have begun proliferating diaries for willing readers, transforming the blog into a full-out community discussion.

Has the blogosphere matched the power of the Republican echo chamber to affect the television news sources from which most citizens get their information? Certainly not, but it is expanding in influence at an exponential rate. Dean's campaign has continued to push the frontier, particularly with its politically risqué feature Bloggerstorm, which provides links to blogs on the ground as an alternative source of campaign coverage. Already the blogosphere undoubtedly gives many a pundit and reporter second thoughts before they try to slip something by, and they are doing much for the progressive cause on their own. But as you read this, non-profits and partisan groups throughout Washington are engaged in an arms race to find the next step in harnessing this emerging medium, and of course the internet in general. The most successful thus far has been Podesta's Center for American Progress, whose daily e-newsletter The Progress Report is actually written in a sort of concise blog format, plays into the sort of immediate reaction unique to the blogging cycle, and already enjoys a two-way exchange of information with the blogosphere (The Center was conceived as one piece in the counterpart to the right-wing echo chamber). The movement behind all of this, which of course is only the latest emergence of populism (and is not reducible to “anti-war”), stands at arm's reach of the establishment. Despite some degree of mutual distrust, both want to work with each other, perhaps even to merge. There are obstacles such as questions of independence, integrity, and vulnerability on both sides, but both sides are also realizing how much they have in common, how little they disagree on (seeing through the RNC's “far-left” label), and how much is at stake in November. In a presidential race that could be every bit as close as 2000, the ability of the two groups to find innovative collaborations, and to trust and embrace each other, may determine everything.

Jesse Lee is a regular columnist for www.opednews.com and operates Common Sense, a biweekly newsletter designed for distribution by online readers in Bush Country. He co-operates the blog www.moneyjungle.org and is a founding contributor to the platform of 2020 Democrats. To comment on this column, or to receive Common Sense via email, contact Jesse at commonsense@opednews.com.