Dangers ahead for the New Media

The biggest danger ahead for the New Media is that it might be
co-opted by the old media.

There’s plenty of the old media mentality on the Internet. Think
about it. Just because CNN publishes an online edition doesn’t make its
content any less objectionable, biased, or pro-establishment.

And there are new corporate names on the Internet that are just as
bad. Take, for example, ZDNet. It may not
sound like the old media, but it sure reads like it.

On Monday, a reporter named Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols wrote a piece
for ZDNet called “Here’s Linux for fundamentalists.” It displayed the
kind of anti-Christian bigotry — and ignorance — that many of us have
come to expect from the establishment press. But this was in the New
Media.

Vaughan-Nichols wrote about a fanciful “Christian Linux distribution”
system — covering his poor reportage with the all-too-familiar opening
caveat: “Hoax or reality?”

Well, Mr. Vaughan-Nichols, it has always been my understanding that
we pay journalists to sort out the difference between hoax and reality.

Nevertheless, ZDNet went with a story suggesting
that a satirical website
promoting the “Jesux” system for “Christian hackers, schools, families
and churches” might actually be real. All it really took was a
discerning eye by someone free of anti-Christian prejudices to see
through the parody.

It took a followup story by
Vaughan-Nichols a couple days later to explain what should have been
obvious to a serious, unbiased, trained observer from the start —
“Jesux” was a joke — albeit a not-very-funny one.

The point of all this? The New Media, to a great extent, is the old
media dressed up in new clothes. Consumers must vigilantly exercise
discretion in using the Internet as a news source. Old media reporters
and editors are high-tailing it out of newspapers and television as fast
as they can get into the world of the New Media. That presents problems.

There’s an active effort to bring the same, old, tired values into
the New Media. Mr. Vaughan-Nichols strikes me as a perfect example.

ZDNet calls Vaughan-Nichols its senior technology editor. The site
says he is chairman of something called the “Internet Press Guild, a
group devoted to promoting accurate reporting.”

Accurate reporting? Such as the initial piece on “Jesux,” which
seemed more intent on ridiculing Christians and promoting bogus
stereotypes than informing the public about anything real or important?
And what, on Earth, is the Internet Press Guild?

I’ll tell you what: We don’t need an Internet Press Guild. What we
need are more informed consumers — like those the Internet is helping
to create. They will be the watchdogs of the New Media. There is little
need for these “professional” gatekeepers any more than there is for the
government kind who would like to stick their nose under the tent.

I’m happy to say that at WorldNetDaily.com, Inc., the newest,
independent for-profit news agency on the block, we won’t be yielding to the “wisdom” of any Internet Press
Guild or government gatekeepers. This is the free press — the real
thing.

And as WorldNetDaily.com makes this transition today into the world
of profits, let me pledge to our loyal readership, as well as the many
new readers who will be joining us in the months and years to come, that
we will never sell out. We will never compromise with the truth. We will
never let anyone else set our goals, objectives and priorities. We will
never let the “conventional wisdom” dictate our perception of reality.
We will never be seduced by television contracts or big-money deals. We
will never try to be “celebrities.” We will never accept dualistic
thinking.

All we will do at WorldNetDaily.com is to continue telling it like it
is.

We’ll do this from well outside the Beltway or the nation’s media
centers to ensure that our vision is never corrupted.

And we hope that you continue to appreciate this special, unique
mission.