Media Ecology

Over the last hundred years the press has done a fair job of exposing lies, hypocrisy, and injustice in the high places it has found them. Not a perfect job of course, but a decent job. The potential targets of such exposure, the government, politicians, corporations, the wealthy, and the famous, have learned, over time, and with varying degrees of success, to reduce such exposure and also to limit the damage done after such exposure. Potential targets in this media-rich environment have developed an immune system: don't do or say anything that might bring on a press attack; if attacked, mitigate the damage by confessing early. PR departments are a big part of this immune system.

Yet the press almost never subjects itself to this kind of exposure- there's a grey wall of silence when it comes to media lies, hypocrisy, and injustice. So unlike other organisms in the media-rich environment, the press itself doesn't have an immune system for press attacks.

Along come blogs and other newly evolved media. The immune system that the politicians, corporations, and others have developed for press attacks mostly serves them well against new media attacks. Sure, further refinements have been and will be necessary, but their systems are far enough evolved to be quite useful as a defense.

The blogs have one target that the press doesn't: the press. And the press has almost nothing in the way of defense. They've had a gentleman's agreement not to attack each other. They never needed an immune system and therefore they don't have one. They have only a slight inkling of how not to say or do anything that won't bring on a new media swarm and they have virtually no idea of how to mitigate the damage during an attack.

And so like the Plague spreading across Europe, huge media organizations are brought low, one after the other, in their numbers, by tiny little bloggers: viruses on fleas on rats. Consternation and madness! The world is coming to an end! Heady days.

But as with any epidemic, eventually a new equilibrium will be reached. The weak and defenseless will be killed off- relatively quickly too. Others, those with some semblence of immunity- or the just plain lucky, will survive and adapt. The smart will co-opt. Symbiotic relationships will come about.

The press- the MSM- will eventually learn to live with the blogs. They'll develop their immune systems and everyone will be better for it. In the new media ecology, which is now forming, these great die-offs will not occur. Not until the next organism is introduced anyway.

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Other Eason Jordan wrap-ups: the deep PressThink, the inciteful Michelle Malkin, the wide-ranging La Shawn Barber, the on-the-spot Rebecca MacKinnon, the questing Sisyphean Musings, and the now obsolete Easongate.

Update: Will Collier at VodkaPundit has a geat little post.