Identity over Ideas: What the HSO Won’t Tell You

Today, I'm posting for the first time since joining the alliance. OnTheBorderline Blog has many original posters, most very thorough in their analysis and commentary. Today, I will offer you an article about our local newspaper bias, that seems very endemic throughout all of nation and especially Wisconsin and applicable to us all. The bottom line, it is through Blogs like the ones that belong to this alliance that will be the purveyors of truth.

01-18-2005 by celia @ 11:58 pm

Many print media–and the local Hudson Star-Observer is no exception–claim they are “reporters” covering stories with objectivity and accuacy. Their media monopoly has altered their perception, and they see themselves and the stories they cover through the filters of a collective mind. So, breathe deeply when the bloggers come, as truth is in the air and they will clear the cobwebs of the monopoly mentality.

It is not, as Zel Miller pointed out, the media that give us the First Amendment: it is the soldiers. A good blogg is a battleground, a place where ideas are fought on merit, and truth stands in the end. Courage is the stuff of which good soldiers are made, but the Hudson Star-Observer lacks the courage to provide that battleground of ideas, opting for the impotence of political correctness and the stagnant need to have a pre-ordained result.

What the HSO doesn’t tell you is that they rely on press releases from the local school district to dictate the contents of school-related stories, not bothering to independently verify the sources or check the facts. And they won’t tell you that one business was reportedly so disgusted with their stories one week that they asked the HSO to come and get the papers because they couldn’t sell them in good conscience. And they will never mention their refusal to print an editorial this week that mentioned this blogg in a positive way–after printing several editorials by HSO groupees who wrote negatively about this blogg. The HSO will allow websites to be named in the form of insults, but not in a promotional form. So, what’s the problem? It’s the identity, stupid.

If a good blogg is a battleground for ideas, then a bad newspaper will read like an Enquirer imitation of “Who Did What to Whom” this week. Identity over Ideas is what drove Dan Rather and CBS, and it’s what drives the Hudson Star-Observer. Will they ever change, perhaps even invite a truly different viewpoint to write a column or do their school reporting? Probably not, whether it’s CBS or a small-town paper, their altered perception has sent them up a river without a paddle–oh, and the name of the River is De Nial.
So, [b]logg on and say what you think!