Bloggasm

So tonight, while everyone is watching the vice presidential debates, I’m going to be one of the few helping to run this.

What is it? I’ll let Gizmodo explain it for you: C-SPANs ‘Debate Hub’ Is the Political Social Media Web 2.0 Uber Geek’s Wet Dream

Yes, the world’s most popular gadget blog wrote that about the website I’m running tonight.

If you’re going to spend your days complaining how the media is supposedly liberally biased, then become a journalist. Ask yourself why those journalists happen to have (perceived) biases (for instance, are you seriously claiming that when they’re hired they’re given some kind of political litmus test?), and why so few conservatives are willing to do the legwork journalism on their own. What is it about journalism, in your mind, that is inherently liberally biased? Don’t just start with the assumption that it’s true. What is your hypothesis for why it’s true? And, in your opinion, why is it that these journalists, the people who are getting the information firsthand, directly from the sources, conducting the most research into topics as a group, happen to side with the left? Why are academics, another group constantly attacked by the right as being biased, the most educated in their fields, usually left of center? Why are scientists, yet another group constantly attacked by the right as being biased, who also happen to be incredibly knowledgeable in their fields, usually left of center?

A headline from The Politico: In reintroduction, Palin to do more interviews and “tell her story”

How the headline should read: “Palin to receive free unfettered advertising from right wing radio ideologues.”

Woohoo!

My coworker Leslie twisted my arm and made me sign up for a Twitter account. So here it is.

That’s what newly launched R-igg claims it can provide. I was contacted by one of the people behind it after my Media Shift article was published, and I asked him how a community driven site could be forced to politically lean one way or the other without editor moderation. Here’s his reply:

Thanks for your quick response! Obviously, this is a very difficult thing to control. We strongly believe in letting the crowd power the news of the website, and so we will work to avoid administratively intervening at all costs.

In terms of preventing a ‘liberal takeover,’ there a couple of barriers in place:

1) At the most basic level — we’d hope that folks will respect the purpose of our website. Reading through the comments on Digg and your article, it seems that many people on both sides believe that there is a liberal bias in the Digg community. Hopefully, these folks will recognize the rationale behind our website and will ‘live and let live.’

2) We have built a solid community of folks who have been very active on our website. We believe that they would step up in response to any attempts to take over the site.

3) The algorithm that determines whether a story makes it to the front page is fairly complex, but one thing it factors in is your history on R-igg — how long you’ve been there, and how your votes on stories correlate to what would be considered to be a ‘mainstream’ vote. This means that votes from folks who have been around for a long time and have contributed to the site regularly carry more weight than votes from new visitors.

I hope this answers your question. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do. Thanks!

Regards,

Aaron M. Marks
President
Three Group, LLC

Man, if this isn’t the journalistic version of shooting from the hip, I don’t know what is:

There is another much more intriguing explanation out there. According to Shay at Booker Rising, which describes itself a newsite for black moderates and black conservatives [emphasis added]:

I took the shuttle bus back to Minneapolis, and I overheard a convention organizer named Phil telling a convention delegate that the protesters on Wednesday night got through because of media credentials that were traced back to MSNBC (he told her that each credential has an individual bar code for each convention invitee). They suspect MSNBC this time as well.

If indeed the badges are bar-coded, it should be a simple matter to check those in the possession of the protesters and determine their provenance.

Notice how he talks about how easy it is to fact check the story, only to not fact check it before running with it? If this turns out not to be true, then I hereby revoke Newsbuster’s right to criticize a journalist ever again.