Making the news

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Following yesterday's post, it's timely that Salon published this quick breakdown of how public debate is shaped.

(For those too lazy to click: The "WTC Mosque" is the product of one crazy person with a blog, who dug up the "story" months after hearings ended in NYC. It is now in its third week of "debate" by the most prominent people in America)

Not that this hasn't always been the case. Editors, owners or celebrity journalists have always been able to decide what we treat as news. The public gets to choose between a few of them, at best. As with any institution we trust that the press are not too petty, not too crooked, not too crazy, too often. That more than not, they fulfill a useful mission.

This isn't going very well. I look at our mixed-media landscape and marvel at the power it gives, say, me.

What if I decided to ruin your life?

Let's say you're not a famous person already. Or a particularly outrageous person. Or someone who made the misguided, tragic choice to sign a waiver with Michael Moore.

It doesn't matter.

I could have an e-mail of yours. I could have a video of you doing something normal, like speaking at your rotary club. I could see you walking down the street and decide "Buddy, next week, Wolf Blitzer will be asking every Senator what he thinks ... of you."

I take a photo of you on my phone. I follow you to work. I describe you in any way I want. If you work at a state animal shelter, I go of on my anti-PETA rant, pepper it with "domestic terrorism" "fire bombing" and the "larger issue" of so many "public resources" being spent on "animals, instead of people like the (homeless/jobless/working mothers/churches/9/11 families)." I put a subject heading in my e-mail like "America: Going to the Dogs"? I email this ridiculous free-association game I have just played with your face and the front of your office building ... to every blogger I can think of on the planet. 

If I get the attention of even one of hundreds of people who will all be looking for something to talk about that day, they will post on you. From there, your face is a floating focal point for The Issue of Animal Shelters In America. Or Animal Rights in America or even Government Waste in Recession America.

(Hey, remember Volcano Monitoring?)

You can sit there, in some obscure blog read by 50 people, until the interns come searching. The interns for Daily Kos or BigGovernment or Huffington Post or Little Green Footballs ... whomever. They all need to farm for content they can re-package and put on the Main Page. Something that can be specific and made to look outrageous or connect to some broader emotion. The actual event can be weeks, months, or years old. It can be a "debate" that has already been settled and isn't a debate any more.

It doesn't matter.

Eventually, if I have been competent at all in packaging you, you will fill the needs of Tuesday's mid-afternoon editor at Hit & Run - an example of "spending shame" or "boutique government services" or "tax-favored PETA's outsize effect on the culture." They will link to the obscure post which cites my email, wag their finger at you, then move on. Wendesday afternoon cometh.

CNN famously (hilariously) tries to tie all its content into New Media and cite blogs as often as possible. The company's reached this bizarre point in its life-cycle where it tries to stay current by broadcasting issues raised and driven entirely by others. It's ceased to be a caterpillar in any real way, but is still alive as a wasp nest. I'm overthinking this.

Fox is proudly Newscorp, in that it believes any story should involve a skinny young white girl reporting on skinny young white girls taking off as much clothing as possible. Blondes preferred. Celebrities preferred. Gay marriage is barely a story until it includes bikini pictures and a pagent star and a sex tape. It's the most heterosexual gay story you'll ever see.

So ... who's going to bite first? Will PETA get Nicole Kidman naked in public, and will that footage need a "news hook" or will Rick Sanchez need two more minutes of air after he's exhausted HuffPo and Sarah Palin's Twitter, for the day? 

Whichever, whenever ... welcome to prime time.

I hope that cell picture I snapped of you is flattering, because it's on top of the right-hand graphic on cable news, with bullet points under it. "Controversial Shelters" - "Animals, Not Firefighters?" - "Dog Tired of Public Waste?"

I have no idea what your name is, but Reason's troller already took care of that by placing the shelter with the town with the picture with your name. This was their quality control. 

Now that the "issue" has been raised on a national news program, every reporter has sanction to fill their afternoon by asking the President, the First Lady, congressional staffers, heads of think tanks ... whomever they want to quote that day ... what they "think of this controversy."

Because of the way Rick Sanchez packaged it, because of the way Reason packaged it, because of the way DoggoneTired.com packaged it, because of the way I packaged it, the default position will probably be to hate you. To "regret your actions" and "regret what you represent" but grudgingly acknowledge your freedom of speech. The guests on Hannity and the local news reporters (now outside your house) will be more blunt.

They all needed you. They're not bad people. The President of the United States did not get up that morning with the intention of calling you "regrettable." It will be a miracle he remembers that part of that press conference. The stories that make up our dialogue have been brought to his level by a machine with no driver. An all-sucking vacuum that is always turned on and always running empty. An hourly, minutely need for Content, serviced by a chain of hungry nervous people who know what something needs to sound like to get noticed and passed further up.

I can clip you to the end of that chain.

The best part is: If it works, I will be more trustworthy. I will have made rain for the little blogger, who became a hot link for everyone else. The machine will look for him, and he will look for me. I can become a brand, open my own site, and be hungry.

...

Time to go live in the woods.