Belated Awareness of MSM Mention

So do journos do better blogs? To find out, I surfed away from the enjoyable eclecticism that is Boing Boing into murkier online waters to confront those who specialise in flaming the mainstream media, or “MSM”. Almost without exception, these sites have been galvanised by their support of the war in Iraq.

 

Kevin Aylward of the conservative Wizbang blog is a trenchant critic of the MSM and runs his own weblog awards. So who better to ask whether journalists give better blog?

 

“You’re kidding, right?” Aylward responds. “If not, the answer is NO.”

 

He also denies Boing Boing is a mainstream media blog, rather it’s a blog whose authors are in various positions in journalism. “There’s a difference,” he insists, adding that we shouldn’t get too wrapped up in the significance of awards.

 

One of the more extreme critics is Clarity & Resolve, operated by Patrick O’Brien, who dedicates himself to “spreading the truth about Islamic terror”. It carries the tagline “MSM+Mujahideen=Love” and specialises in slamming Islam and the political left. O’Brien is frustrated over what he describes as the media’s “leftist, anti-America, anti-Israel and all round anti-Western liberal democracy slant”. Much of the antipathy and derision aimed at mainstream media online, he says, is hyperbole and rebellion against perceived authority.

 

“On my site I am often frustrated with MSM whitewashing of the subjects I cover, but it’s not out of spite; it’s out of genuine concern for depicting reality as it really is, for fairness and for the wellbeing of free people, and those who wish to be free. Sounds trite, I know, but it’s true.”

 

O’Brien hadn’t heard of the Bloggies; the only major weblog award he’d heard of, ironically, was run by the The Washington Post. In January, however, Clarity & Resolve did finish in eighth place in the “Best Israel Advocacy Blog” section of Australia’s own Israellycool.com’s Jewish & Israeli Blog Awards. High praise indeed.