How Blogs Failed the War in Georgia

by Joshua Foust on 8/19/2008 · 6 comments

Columbia Journalism Review asked me to write an essay criticizing blogger coverage of the War in Georgia. As I’m sure you can imagine, I was scathing.

While this wasn’t necessarily surprising—after all, these blogs all talk in a big circle, and tend to reference each other—it was disappointing. As Reason’s Michael C. Moynihan trenchantly observed, much of the commentary on the conflict resolved into very clear partisan lines: Russia on the Left, Georgia on the Right. Rather than providing the clarity, nuance, and honesty that they promise to provide, the big blogs instead retreated to their comfortable and predictable ideological corners. By keeping to their usual haunts, these blogs did their readers a tremendous disservice: they were just as incurious and ideological as they regularly accuse the MSM of being.

Go read the whole thing. Hopefully no one calls me “peevish” this time around. That’d make me cry.

{ 6 comments }

1 Shohmurod 8/19/2008 at 11:46 am: http://exiledonline.com/ Editor Mark Ames who contributes articles to The Nation did a very decent analysis of the situation in Georgia with a good backgrounder. Their regular columnist Gary “The War Nerd” Brecher covered the action from his unique perspective. Check it out!
2 Matt K. 8/19/2008 at 1:10 pm: This is why I’m always skeptical when someone says that such and such is better than what it’s replacing, or supplementing, or whatever. See, if at the age (less than 20, more than 15) that I am, I’ve learned to be skeptical about claims of Fabulous Wonders, I’m a little surprised that other people haven’t. MSM journalists and bloggers are all humans (some could be space aliens, I don’t know), and therefore, they all make mistakes. That’s why the blogosphere isn’t necessarily better than the MSM.
3 Joshua Foust 8/19/2008 at 1:21 pm: I love Brecher. Don’t always agree with him, but he’s entertaining as hell to read. And The Exile will be much pissed — I was SO angry when Russia canceled their printing license!
4 Ethan B 8/19/2008 at 4:52 pm: Well written and spot on.
5 JTapp 8/19/2008 at 6:32 pm: I think the language barrier is a huge issue/handicap. I believe even you mentioned in a previous post that you had to have someone translate the Russian news/blogs for you. A lot of the “elite” bloggers don’t speak Russian and didn’t know how to find blogs by Ossetians or Georgians on the ground.
Blogging is no longer an English-language-only thing. This war demonstrated that for us all.
6 Blair Sheridan 8/20/2008 at 5:15 am: Excellent review. And I couldn’t agree more about the value of The Oil & the Glory.