Internet And Democracy :: essays research papers

IF THE aerial sound bite is the shame of televisedelection reportage, then information overcharge is the parallel pitfall onthe Internet. After spending one unceasing day in October reviewing Webcoverage of the presidential campaign, I back tooth verify that the onlineuniverse is indeed infinite, and that politics, not pornography,seemed the most prolific theme. stupid(p) by thousands of intelligence operation articles, background pieces,surveys, discussion forums, transcripts and commentary, thishuman brain virtually screamed for spoon-fed mush. Election sectionson most of the major news sites were so extensive that a personcouldnt possibly process all the sections and subsections andsub-subsections. About 20 percent of the halt seemed digestible therest was far more than the second-rate visitor would care to chew. But thats the nature of the Internet, isnt it? Throw enough stuffat the wall, and most of it will be used by someone. permit folks pick andchoose their news. If nothing else, all the fodder provided a number ofready-made high school civics reports and fed the repurposingrequirements of fellow reporters. And wherefore not? Airtime and column inches dont exist on theInternet. Theres no need to finalize between an interview with acandidates grade school sweetheart, a 5,000-word analytic thinking of hisposition on health care or a parity of campaign platforms. Youcan do all of that and more. This is a good thing, isnt it? Yes. As long as an organization has theresources and vision to distinguish its core coverage from theornaments that surround it. Along those lines, cheers to all of the major news sites for theirefforts at give way speech and debate coverage, solid election news andvoting resources. close every news organization with access to live video burgeon forthedit preferably successfully during the debates and provided catalogedarchives for future reference (abcNEWS.com even offered a streamin Spanish). Nearly live text tran scripts were too available on mostsites. The innovation award goes to Web White & Blue 2000(www.webwhiteblue.org). Sponsored by the Markle Foundation, theproject was a consortium of 17 major Internet sites and newsorganizations from AOL and Yahoo to MTV and MSNBC. Each day thepresidential candidates or their surrogates would respond to aquestion submitted by a visitor at one of the confederate sites. Theanswers and rebuttals could come in any format and were unlimitedin length. not only did the Al Gore and George W. Bush campaigns respondregularly, but also the Reform Partys Pat Buchanan, LibertarianHarry Browne, Natural Law candidate seat Hagelin and theConstitution Partys Howard Phillips. Only Ralph Nader declined to