A Sea of New Media
This is a tribute to New Media and a look into the impressive emergence of a new generation of journalists — real truth tellers — the citizen journalists. I hosted a locally inspired online TV show in Washington, DC for five years and it opened my eyes to and shaped my understanding of the tremendous power of the media. But social media platforms, which are rapidly evolving, are enabling faster and more honest reporting of world and local events. Information is coming at us at breakneck speeds and in copious amounts that can overwhelm us but we are fortunate to have these new options to get informed. And in many cases it’s lightning speed faster than anything mainstream media outlets can produce.
The media philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously said, “the medium is the message” and never has that been more apparent than in the revelations throughout the 2016 presidential campaign. This showed us that this is not Edward R. Murrow’s journalism. Murrow was known for honesty and integrity in journalism. Through revelations by Wikileaks as well as emerging New Media icons like Mike Cernovich, James O’Keefe, Jack Posobiec, and Laura Loomer, just to name a few, we witnessed the mechanisms by which the traditional mainstream media (MSM) not only reported false stories and information but also how they fabricate stories and then report them as “news.” This beautiful, precious country requires an honest, truthful objective free media to thrive.
I understand the history of how objective journalism got lost in the sea of greed created by the birth of cable news. Cable news ushered in the tsunami of commercialization: sensationalism = increased ratings = money = corruption and manipulation of the media message. Anyone who caught the TV series Newsroom understands how manipulation of the news is done in backrooms and ends up in the A and B blocks of each cable news show!
My personal favorite and New Media hero was the late Andrew Breitbart, who emphasized the power of the people…through our smart phones! He taught us that where the mainstream media fails, citizen journalists could replace their attempts to mislead and redirect the narrative. We are blessed to live in a time of such personal technology. Your camera, your smartphone, your social media capability makes you just as powerful in breaking a story as ABC, NBC, FoxNews or the New York Times. At the Tax Day Tea Party in 2010 Breitbart told everyone over and over in the crowd to hold up their cellphones in the air and once they did he awakened their understanding to the reality that “We have a sea of New Media here to capture the lies!”
Just this year, New Media icon, documentary filmmaker, writer, attorney, and author of Gorilla Mindset, Mike Cernovich, broke what may turn out to be the biggest story of the year in the revelation that former US Ambassador Susan Rice was instrumental in unmasking classified names in surveillance during the Obama administration relative to President Trump’s campaign. What’s even more powerful when you think about Breitbart’s efforts, is that the Citizen Journalist neutralizes any attempt by mainstream media to shut down stories that do not fit their narratives. When 25,000 people are tweeting an event with photos, it’s virtually impossible for mainstream outlets to shut it down. And most recently, James O’Keefe, who destroyed the government funded ACORN with undercover videos exposing their fraud just began the takedown of the fake news media with a video expose of CNN’s operatives in the business of propaganda. This work reveals the truth — that the Trump – Russia narrative is a media driven hoax.
I am finishing a book describing the great work of our Citizen Journalists, famous and some not yet famous, because they are restoring the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, Freedom of the Press — and the preservation of liberty by a populace that is truthfully informed.
We are now in a Sea of New Media — and it is us.