Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader read this interesting article from the Washington Post. It discusses how bloggers disseminated leaked exit polling information yesterday.
A few questions:
1) Could bloggers have depressed Kerry turnout by reporting (incorrect) exit polling data showing their man ahead comfortably?
2) Could bloggers have increased Bush turnout by reporting (incorrect) exit polling data showing their man was behind?
3) Should bloggers have run with the leaked data when the mainstream press was mum on the subject?
A few thoughts:
It is too early to tell, if it will even be possible to tell, if bloggers had a significant impact on voter turn out. Your Maximum Leader voted later in the day (so that Mrs. Villain and the Villainous Offspring could join him). So he read the accounts and heard the buzz. It had no affect on him at all. That is not to say it didn’t with others.
Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure how he feels on the whole “bloggers scooped the media” aspect of the story. As all loyal minions know your Maximum Leader and his Ministers are not about scoops or exclusives. We are about commentary, analysis, and opinion. So words it is unlikely that any minion will read here are: “Exclusive to Nakedvillainy! Must give Credit where Credit is due!” This medium is, as you all know, a rapidly changing one that for the most part is all about the moment.
An example of this is the story of Theo Van Gogh’s murder yesterday. Your Maximum Leader had some thought collected about that story that he planned on sharing. But Rusty wrote about it faster than did your Maximum Leader. And now the story seems so… Yesterday…
That is the way blogs are. They are a medium of the moment. One shouldn’t rely on them as a primary news source. They are not news sources. While your Maximum Leader thinks that blogs serve a very important purpose in keeping citizens informed/educated they are not news services.
If your Maximum Leader had had some scoop on exit poll numbers yesterday, it is doubtful that he would have mentioned anything about it unless he felt very strongly about the provenance of the information. (And even then the partisan in him may have wanted to squelch it. Such is the lot of a pseudo-benevolent autocrat.) But your Maximum Leader certainly doesn’t condemn those bloggers who did.
Carry on.
