Alhamisi, 17 Oktoba 2013

The Switch

President Obama trolls bloggers

President Barack Obama speaks in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington on Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013. Lawmakers Wednesday voted to avoid a financial default and reopen the government after a 16-day partial shutdown. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
President Obama speaks in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington on Thursday. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
President Obama gave a speech on the shutdown and debt-ceiling deal Thursday. It was a wide-ranging set of remarks, but one specific comment jumped out for us bloggers here at The Switch. Here is the full quote, with emphasis added.
And now that the government has reopened and this threat to our economy is removed, all of us need to stop focusing on the lobbyists, and the bloggers, and the talking heads on radio and the professional activists who profit from conflict, and focus on what the majority of Americans sent us here to do, and that's grow this economy, create good jobs, strengthen the middle class, educate our kids, lay the foundation for broad-based prosperity and get our fiscal house in order for the long haul. That's why we're here. That should be our focus.
That sounds an awful lot like the president claiming that bloggers are tearing America apart. And there really are some perverse incentives in the online news business: When there is conflict, people want to read about it. And more page views directly translates to revenue in most cases.  So bloggers and other journalists do tend to produce a lot of content when there are major news stories that revolve around conflict, like, say, ourgovernment shutting down for 16 days and Congress pushing our economy to theprecipice of disaster.
But blaming the blogging field for the way the Internet and the entire journalism industry works seems like a bit a a reach -- especially lumping them in with professional activists and lobbyists who are literally paid to advocate one side or another, as well as partisan talking heads. Is the president trolling us?
Andrea Peterson
Andrea Peterson covers technology policy for The Washington Post, with an emphasis on cybersecurity, consumer privacy, transparency, surveillance and open government. She also delves into the societal impacts of technology access and how innovation is intertwined with cultural development.

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Graybeard3
10/17/2013 1:07 PM PDT
I don't think people think or worry a lot--if at all--whether someone is a paid flak for a point of view or not. A voice is a voice is a voice.
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miseaujeu
10/17/2013 12:41 PM PDT
I think it's sometimes hard to hear what emphasis is intended when seeing a written transcript of a speech. But there are numerous examples of blogs put together by "people who profit from conflict" - often radio personalities will run a blog, put together books, and so forth. When I heard and saw the video, I thought the emphasis was on the conflict, rather than the technology.
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perman1
10/17/2013 12:41 PM PDT
In the USA you can say and believe any damn fool thing you want, and many people exercise that right on a daily basis. It doesn't mean that any damn fool thing can be considered as policy, and I think the President is trying to exercise some leadership to bring the discussion about our nation's problems to an objective, fact-based level.
History is taking our portrait right now, so let's all slap a smile on it and get along for as long as it takes to work this out. Then we can resume our normal expressions when the photographer is done.
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Rimfire
10/17/2013 12:37 PM PDT
"all of us need to stop focusing on the lobbyists, and the bloggers, and the talking heads on radio and the professional activists.."

Mr. President, you could have just said "all of us need to stop focusing on those that disagree with me."
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rlj1
10/17/2013 12:36 PM PDT
He is right. There are some bloggers, etc. that do disseminate 'untruths' and try to find conflict or get the most hits.

If the shoe fits...
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snaketime1
10/17/2013 12:36 PM PDT
I think he meant to say twitterers ...
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bobnoir
10/17/2013 12:34 PM PDT
He's probably lumping bloggers into groups who disseminate buckets of misinformation that grows like rumors as it's passed along from reader to reader. At least legitimate journalists check sources more than once and have a code of ethics many bloggers don't have. The latter philosophy is, "spew i out there and see what sticks".
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gardyloo
10/17/2013 12:31 PM PDT
The President could have sharpened his definition of the bloggers about whom he was speaking. It might be a list of bloggers/aggregators such as Drudge and Carlson (and, to be fair, those on the left as well), and also all of those writers who hoover in readers by linking to dubious content and shrill analysis without checking facts or pedigrees. The definition becomes a little vague at the periphery, but I don't think you are included.

How about, "attack bloggers"?
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