Why Are We So GD Partisan?

Lately blogs in general and BT Blogs in particular have come under much closer scrutiny from MSM commentators (not to mention the ubiquitous troll tribe). CEOs of huge media companies have argued against the veracity and value of blogs to the public forum. Journalists have taken to sending comments to blogs that dare to criticize them or question their motives.
Overall they refuse to accept the Status Went of the business they're in.
Why are they so irritated and why do we so delight in pissing them off?

The sheer growth of media messaging and noise in all media over the last five years has compounded many times. There are billions and billions of media messages (including blogs) broad and narrow casted every day. The sheer volume of communications has led to every messenger needing to develop a very specific point of view to be noticed. And this has resulted in polarization on every topic.

The MSM has almost never been fair and balanced - it's editorial owners have always had a conflict or an axe to grind. With the concentration of big media, this conflict has most often resulted in a singular commitment - to get eyeballs. And this has as often as not resulted in the most valuable persons in their newsrooms being their headline and caption writers - not their fact finders, checkers or copy writers.

In a world where facts are expensive and opinions are cheap, business managers have reached for the bottom in a rush to get the most noise at the least cost. At all costs.

So MSM developed the star system: more and more opinion writers with stronger and stronger opinions. Making the hosts of programs and writers of stories the news not the events themselves. Imus being most recently prominent, Geraldo in years past, Carroll & Oakley in Toronto, the Red Star Gang, the list goes on in every media market. People don't learn anything from these self-described journalists, but they do listen and read. News has become the equivalent of Reality TV; Cheap, tawdry and popular.

So we come to the BTs. We too are a media aggregator. We also have a common point of view. We also want readers. We have to be part of the noise to receive attention. Although I cannot speak for all of us, I think we greatly resent how the big media with big budgets and big audiences dominate the noise with positions that we vehemently disagree with. We are not shrinking violets and we stand on our principles.

We need to maintain our place in the public forum until our MSM philosophical opponents offer a balanced perspective that is purely based upon reporting the facts and not pushing their own conflicted positions at the expense of the public interest. I'm not holding my breath - I think we'll be around for a long time.