Fraters Libertas

Same Old Story, Same Old Song And Dance

The current issue of the local monthly The Rake features an interview with CNN's Aaron Brown, who hails from Hopkins, Minnesota, and, like approximately 789,000 other Minnesotans, attended the University of Minnesota but never graduated.

Most of Brown's answers aren't particularly revealing (or interesting for that matter), but he does manage to ring the old cliché bell pretty hard when he's asked about bloggers. Before you read the question and answer, think about the most common line on bloggers that you hear from MSM types. Ready? Read on:

Q: What's it like to have, say, five thousand bloggers checking your facts on the Internet?

A: I have no problem at all with five thousand fact-checkers--the more, the merrier. We go on the air each night believing that we are factually accurate, so checking facts is not a problem to me.

Here it comes...

The problem with bloggers is,...

You already know what he's going to say, don't you?

...who's checking the bloggers?

Ding, ding, ding. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. This question has been asked and vigorously ANSWERED so many times it's ridiculous. That fact that Brown asked this question means that he either:

A. Doesn't know-which shows his ignorance

or

B. Doesn't care-which shows his arrogance

Brown continues:

One of the traditional and important roles of the press, which some people lovingly refer to as the mainstream media, was to act as gatekeeper. Not every fallacious or untrue accusation made it to air. These days, in the era of the Internet, the role of gatekeeper is pretty much gone.

You catch that, you footloose and fancy free bloggers who dare operate without the precious gatekeeper? In the good ol' days, "Not every fallacious or untrue accusation made it to air." Sure some "fallacious or untrue accusations" made it to air (with no one to correct or refute them!), but not every one did. Makes you pine for those glory days of old, don't it?