Tales Of The Echo-chamber

I can't help feeling somewhat disturbed by the whole Ben Domenech scandal. When Domenech first got the job at the Washington Post, the commentators on dailykos went after the Washington Post for claiming lack of balance was the reason. I can recall only one post which discussed Domenech's first article, which quite rightly was criticised. But after that the claims changed to be against Domenech and the Washington Post. The content wasn't the point of contention, the person was. This is how Karl Rove conducts his political affairs. I fear this will be the standard and style of criticism for other new media writers who move into mass media.

As Jason Soon notes Domenech claimed he was allowed to plagiarise, which turned out be untrue, to which he promptly martyred himself. There isn't much to grace the whole issue from either end. Domenech is close enough to the party apparatus for it to be doubtful that he really represents the new media, bloggers or citizen commenteriat.

John Sundman remarked a while ago that dailykos was composed of lots of people vigorously agreeing with each other. It is one of the biggest community sites on the internet, and it appears its power, along with sufficient data, is enough that the Washington Post had to back off its hiring decision.

There are numerous big audience sites like this that are becoming part of the political media landscape. Dailykos, free republic, redstate, little green footballs to name a few of differing persuasions of political repugnance. The issue is that these sites are practicing politics in the same manner as the institutional parties and the mainstream media do.

It is hard to see how they are operating as being any different to Karl Rove, to Bill O'Reilly or any other that would seek to discredit the individual rather than debate on policy or content.

I think this is sad that these sites have not innovated on how politics is carried out, they have merely transformed how the same methods are communicated.

I hope this doesn't become par for the course whenever a new media writer or blogger moves into the mainstream media. Australia has its own sites with large audiences that are defined by how vigorously they all agree with each other. I doubt they will act any differently.
avocadia: A fine line:

Ben Domenech is an opinion writer and as such he should either be able to defned his opinions or defend the reasons he no longer holds a previously stated position. That\'s the territory.

The territory of those who disagree with him is arguing the positions he has put forth. When an opinion writer\'s audience is so radically altered - from an echo chamber to a much wider set of people including those likely to disagree - then there has to be some expectation that there will be renewed - or even just all new - scrutiny of the positions held. In the field of philosophy  - which opinion writing is a stream of - plagarism is about the worst thing you can do. So I think he deserved to be smacked down.

There is, however, a fine line between criticism, however rigorous, and ad hominem. Tim Blair didn\'t just cross that line when discussing Margo Kingston, for example, but reversed over it several times in his Hummer while throwing old McDonalds non-biodegradable styrofoam containers all over it. Christopher Hitchens could very well have some worthwhile points in some of his columns, but a great chunk of the Left wouldn\'t know it because he inspires almost incoherent contempt amongst them.

I am uncomfortable that the impetus of the attacks against Domenech wasn\'t honest criticism but revenge - if you like- for the attacks of Domenech and his political peers on Dan Froomkin. On the other hand, Domenech accused Froomkin of cut-and-paste journalism, and had to expect some scrutiny in return. To paraphrase almost beyond recognition, I don\'t really know where the line is on some occasions, but I know when it is crossed. I don\'t think it was crossed with Domenech.
cam: The background check is probably a perl script now: which downloads your complete publishing history and does automated google searches sentence by sentence to see if it is plagiarised.

cam
avocadia: Memory overload: The system would crash, memory overloaded, from trying to note all the hits from the various echo chambers mindlessly repeating the talking points of the day.
cam: I am probably adding to the noise by doing this: commie pinko surrender monkeys - Results 1 - 10 of about 10,900

cam

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