The un-Walter Cronkiting of American politics

I read a href=”http://www.forbes.com/opinions/forbes/2008/0929/089.html”an excellent article /a in emForbes/em this afternoon by Peter Huber, senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute and coauthor of a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/046503117X?ie=UTF8tag=wwwviolentkicomlinkCode=as2camp=1789creative=9325creativeASIN=046503117X”emThe Bottomless Well./em/aimg src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwviolentkicoml=as2o=1a=046503117X” width=”1″ height=”1″ border=”0″ alt=”” style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” / The piece, entitled emCronkite vs. the Web/em takes a look at the role of the web in political elections:br /br /blockquote….the more polarized and divided the national election, the worse the dot-com candidates will ultimately serve the parties that they crash and capture. The Web doesn’t bridge divisions; it multiplies and sharpens them. It doesn’t build consensus or national coalitions; it grows factions. Truth be told, the Web doesn’t network people at all–it lets them network themselves, which is quite different. The Web is the place where people can roll their own, and given that freedom, people tend to coalesce in relatively small, insular groups.br /br /The real genius of the Web, in short, is that it lets people disconnect. That’s why it has obliterated the old media. During the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War, President Lyndon Johnson is reported to have said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” Nobody would ever say that about anything posted on a cronkite.com or a CronkiteTube. There are too many celebrity sites, scattered all over the digital landscape, and they’re all saying different things.br /br /The un-Walter Cronkiting of American politics of course dismays his would-be heirs, but their opinions hardly matter anymore, and they will have all but disappeared from view four years from now. Few of them will be missed, because America, it turns out, doesn’t much trust them. Plummeting audiences for network news have made that clear. The challenge now is to get disconnected people to accept how little they can trust themselves and their closest friends. People who live overwired lives–which means the young, especially–may easily suppose that they have a very good picture of what all the rest of America is thinking. Quite a few of them are going to find out otherwise in a few weeks… /blockquotebr /br /That’s the danger of echo chambers. Perhaps it’s best for blog readers that they read a number of blogs and other sites that do not necessarily agree with their viewpoint. That way, one can get a better understanding of a variety of opinions, not just the ones that agree with one’s own.