If Deep Throat Was a Blogger?
This posting by Michael Gartenburg posits that had the break in at the Watergate complex happened today the information would be in different formats. Derrr.
This is because technology and the way we get the news has changed. Of course, the news of Julius Ceasar's or President Garfield's demises would have been transmitted in a different way if it happened today too.
I think the more important fact is that today "if" the chief executive of the United States were routinely and frivolously committing or promoting felonious behavior amongst his staff that...
1) No one in the FBI would rat him out. Everyone with that kind of ethical sack (and knowledge of the wrongdoing) has already left the building.
2) The news media would not cover it. They have been burnt by so many plagiarist Jayson Blairs and (at least from my perspective) fed bogus or "unverifyable" news stories that their credibility is too strained to be risking another Dan Rather/NewsWeek type foible.
The fact is, The Washington Post put their necks out there publishing the Watergate story. Nixon was immensely popular when he was re-elected in 1972. He was also incredibly vindictive. The only people that could stand to break a story like this today are folks with nothing else to lose.
[hypothetical] Once bloggers and journalists become synonymous, they lose their guerilla advantage. If after the Tet offensive in 1968 the NVA had changed to a more standard, Western Style convention means to oust the Americans from Indo-China, they would have surely been beaten. If Al Queada decided to give up suicide bombings for building a Carrier fleet and a space based missile defense system we would be done over there by the the 4th of July. If Che Guevara...oh you get it. bloggergate
posted by Eric2 @ 10:54 AM
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