The Fifth Estate
Commenting on the initial inattentiveness of the mainstream [American] media (MS) to the "Jeff Gannon" affair, and it's continued pussy-footing and inability to see the actual story, The Guardian [UK] observed (apparently in a story by Paul Harris in New York):
On the internet, the mainstream media is derided and scorned. One question is dominating US newsrooms and television studios: ignored, scandalised and now corrupted, just what is America's mainstream media for anymore?
Suddenly, an interesting and pressing question. When the "media" is either red-brained screaming heads who insult anything that approaches rational thought, or else lap-dogs of the White-House's "news"-manipulation machine, what credibility does even the old-guard, "liberal" press have? Not much, by this point. I don't believe I'd started thinking of the MSM as irrelevant yet, but I've been getting closer.
For me, the crisis began with the "run up" (I hate the idiotic jargon that flows out of the White House press office) to the president's elective war in Iraq. When it was clear that all the White-House mouthpieces were lying about the reasons why we should start the war with such urgency, the MSM spent its time quoting the mouthpieces as though truth fell through their lips (if you quote 'em, it's real!), rather than investigate actual facts. Yes, I live in a hopelessly "reality-based" world of facts and truth.
Later from the same piece:
The Gannon case is a prime illustration [of the shift to the right of the MSM and of its increasing irrelevancy]. If, during the Clinton administration, a fake reporter from a Democrat front organisation, using a false name, had been exposed as attending White House press conferences it would have been a national scandal. If he had then been shown to be a gay prostitute, the scandal could have threatened a Democrat presidency. With 'Gannon' and Bush there has been no such outcry. The mainstream media has approached the story warily, while right-wing organisations such as Fox News have largely ignored it.
That has created a vacuum in the US media. It is a space being filled by 'bloggers' from both left and right who write personal journals, or weblogs, on the internet. It is here that the real media battles are now being fought. The internet has become a sort of Fifth Estate as the Fourth Estate of the mainstream media has slid toward irrelevance. […]
I just wanted to save that bit about the "Fifth Estate", in case I become a "blogger" some day. In the meantime, let's see whether any real journalists will show up with the investigative balls [metaphorical balls, of course, since I intend to be gender neutral in my challenge] it will take to bring some honor back to The Fourth Estate.