Perhaps false reporting like this is why the media has lost so much credibility. Thank God for Blogs like Powerline, LGF, American Thinker.etc.

Without them, Reuters,BBC along with other left leaning news outlets would carry on never having to worry about thir phoney stories being exposed.

I feel that the bright side to the Murdoch/Moore media is the eradication of blind faith in the Cronkite-esq. voice of God media. If we can all agree that all media is subjective, a more civil discourse is possible.

“I’m not a slave to objectivity. I’m never quite sure what it means. And it means different things to different people.”

-Peter Jennings

Another blind faith that has been eradicated is in institutions of authority. The bright side to the New York Times not questioning the worst foreign policy in American history is that we would all be fools give to them our full trust again.

Chris and guests ask the question about who will be the new authorities in media. My answer is that we have been liberated from blind faith and the new freedom forces us to be our own authority. Jacques Derrida said, “We are all mediators, translators.” On a practical level the instrument of the internet has enabled us to employ that mediation more fully.

My worry going forward is that the next blind faith that we have to wrestle with is the idea that if it’s not somewhere on the web then it’s not somewhere.

“But the first problem of the “media” is posed by what does not get translated, or even published in the dominant political languages, the ones that dictate the laws of deceivability, precisely, on the left as much as on the right.”

-Derrida

One can look at this and say the Kremlin has a death grip on the media, you can say the internet doesn’t compete, but only if you are stuck in the mindset that the internet of 10 years from now will bare any resemblance to what we know it to be today. The internet of today is nothing like the internet of 10 years ago, and will continue to change. The internet becomes exponentially faster, and exponentially important. Russians are rapidly getting high speed internet. In a city like Moscow, which has just surpassed London in cost of living, a smokin’ hot fast connection can be had for $25. For $25 a month I get a 6000kbps with an outrageously fast upload, and free Wi-Fi anywhere in the city, oh and with basic cable, in the US this is about $80-$100 worth of service. If you want DSL, you can get some sort of connection for about $10 or so. Just like the cell phone took off because of the lack an acceptable telephone infrastructure, the internet will take off as the news and entertainment source. Television and Radio are the 20th century, in 10 or 20 years we will have our news and entertainment delivered to us directly over the internet. It doesn’t matter if you control Channel 1 if no one has rabbit ears anymore.

In this by allowing an uncensored internet the Kremlin has taken their eye off the ball. The internet of 10 or 20 years from now will make blogging look like the telegraph, and make the TV of today look like the TV of 50 years ago. The longer the Russian internet is allowed to grow and develop out of the Kremlin control, the stronger it will become, the more it will enter people’s everyday life. The more that the forces of the left are pushed out of the mainstream, the more likely they will become internet pioneers. True the opposition has yet to capitalize on any of this, but give it time.

The internet is the future, the television is the past. So, by her assertion that the internet exchange fails to have any effect, she may be right in the present tense, but predicting that this is the future of the internet in Russian life is a mistake.