Ethics

Breitbart, ACORN and New Media

By Ed Brayton

I mostly agree with this article at Slate by Jack Shafer about Andrew Breitbart, those now-infamous undercover videos taken at various ACORN offices around the country and the nature of new media.

Among the many glorious things about American journalism is that no credentialing organization or regulatory body stands between an individual who wants to break a story and his public reporting of it.

In the old days, one significant barrier did deter aspiring reporters: If they couldn't find a publisher for their piece or afford to self-publish, they were SOL. But now, thanks to the free-for-all environment created by the Web, those publication and distribution worries have evaporated. Anybody can be a journalist in the new regime, we're told, and on some days, it seems as if everybody is.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on September 25, 2009 (boomark / email).