What if Bush had 10 Million Email Addresses?

Ten years from now we'll look back and see that 2008 was the watershed year in the end of the traditional media as the primary communication channel to the masses.

It's been an interesting year for news - not only have we had endless subject matter for the media to write about with the most historic election in our lifetime - but this year journalism shifted from the few to the many as witnessed by the growth of quality bloggers and traffic to platforms like the Huffington Post and the Drudge Report.

Until this year someone always controlled the "medium" - the way we get our news. We received the message through an agency (radio, TV, newspapers) which was not neutral, by design (newspaper magnates are classical controllers of public opinion), and so the message we received was filtered by the leaning and opinions of the media owner and editorial board - despite claims of journalistic integrity. It's notable that in 2008 the media even criticized itself for bias towards Obama.

So what's changing? For the first time in history the medium for communication of political messages is not controlled -- because it is the Internet. And for the first time Power tapped into it with Obama's brilliant internet campaign and 10 million email addresses. Our new president can communicate directly to the public without the media - no intermediary at all.

The Internet is open today, and under Obama it should stay open because he has been a supporter of Net Neutrality (as I am). This basically means that the broadband providers cannot control and discriminate what we receive through the internet in our homes - they cannot become Media themselves but are just the communication medium alone - no filter and no bias so we have access to any and all information we want.

Many new media types believe this is a good thing. Freedom of speech - freedom of the dissemination of information. But consider the downside. In the last century we saw powerful positive and negative examples of new waves of media technology influencing what countries thought - from Goebbels in Nazi Germany to JFK's success on TV to Anderson Cooper of CNN live on the ground in hurricane Katrina.

So if anyone, especially people holding political power, can communicate directly with no intermediary - what happens in a world when "old media" become irrelevant? Who is responsible for the traditional journalism values of objective and unbiased reporting for the public good? 10 million email addresses in the hands of a benevolent, popular leader like Obama is not scary, but what if it was a Bush with 10, or 50 million email addresses -- would we know the truth about the Iraq War?

Over the next 10 years it is critical that old media find a way to transform themselves and still preserve journalistic integrity. Just as the Huffington Post has now formed an old-media-style editorial board, it is critical that old media quickly takes advantage of new technologies and approaches. I see the reader's appetite firsthand -- at FirstRain our users want us to know their interests, they want facts not news, they want trends extracted from the facts and they want us to push them only what they want and need to know.

It will take old media rapidly adopting the best technologies of new media to stay relevant and so keep our leaders honest and held accountable -- especially in a world where they will eventually have everyone's email address in a political database.

Comments

[JScott]

What if Bush had 10 Million Email Addresses?


Yup we'd be beseiged with SPAM.

[TrooAmerican]

What if Bush had 10 Million Email Addresses?

First of all, he does have them. Not specifically him, but his party. His party has been flooding the web with email propaganda for years, lies, fraud, fakery, false accusations etc.

But if he actually had them? well there'd be 10 million innocent americans being investigated for terrorism with zero evidence and placed on the watch list at every airport for no reason.

[bigmaddy]

Don't kid yourself Bush has you e-mail address and reads your e-mail now

[Quaoar]

"10 million email addresses in the hands of a benevolent, popular leader like Obama is not scary"

Speak for yourself. Most uses of such a list might be benign, but if the government started a massive e-mail database for the purpose of connecting addresses to real world users and tracking supposedly subversive online activity then it could be a problem. That would be true no matter who was in the oval office.

[3fingerbrown]

Speak for yourself is right.

I voted for Obama without hesitation, but how do we know what kind of leader he is? He doesn't even have the job yet. And even if he turns out to be a benign and popular leader, can we say the same about everyone in his administration? (Harding and Grant were both benign and popular leaders, and their administrations were overrun by crooks.)

Remember that unfiltered communication direct from the government to the people isn't news, it's propaganda, no matter how benign and popular the propagandist may be. God help us if this comes to pass.

And another thing: The so-called new media is now the old media. When web-based media accepts advertising, it's old media, subject to the same corporate pressures and compromises as newspapers and TV.

[jane doe]

What if he did? How is this different from having access to hundreds of millions of television sets? When the president does a public speech, all of the major networks and most of the cable news networks show the entire speech. They may have commentators speaking both before and after the speech, but when the president is at the podium, everyone goes into listen mode. The only real difference is that the communication lands in an e-mail box, where people can ignore it just as easily as they may ignore direct mail flyers that flood mailboxes in the days before elections.

The cure for disturbing or "dangerous" speech is MORE speech by people who disagree with the speaker, not muzzling the so-called dangerous speaker. Otherwise, you get into the issue of who is qualified to make the value judgments about what speech is "okay" and what is not.

C'mon, think about it. This is why we HAVE a First Amendment in this country.

[ICECHATTER]

The Next stage of media - direct to consumer. It does make sense. However some questions for the crew of Huffpo -
What is the actual appetite for these emails? I know I already ignore most of the emails I get from the Obama crew.
How will they pay for that type of communication? I think we expect it during the election season, but will the POTUS be asking for donations to run his PR machine? A bit unseamly, no?
And finally - How does the ownership of these lists play out? Would I be so eager to sign up for Obama's list if say, I thought he'd hand it to Caroline Kennedy? Or Some other politician who I may or may not support?

[SantaFeConservative]

"10 million email addresses in the hands of a benevolent, popular leader like Obama is not scary, but what if it was a Bush with 10, or 50 million email addresses -- would we know the truth about the Iraq War?"

It really depends on what scares you. Personally, having ANY leader with that kind of direct access is scary.

[SeriousBlack]

Heck, he doesn't need email addresses. He and the right wing have Fox "News".