YearlyKos Panel: Blogosphere beats traditional media

Jane Hamsher, a blogger at firedoglake.com, introduces the ‘CIA Leak Investigation Panel’ at the YearlyKos conference in Las Vegas. Hamsher cleverly weaves the story of the Valerie Plame leak while introducing the panel members and outlining just why the blogosphere is so important. Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, is one of the speakers.

Hamsher states that the CIA leak “typifies the very best of what we do in the blogosphere.” She also explains why the blogosphere has become so important in this day and age, contrasting the state of the media following the Whitewater scandal with the present. Following Whitewater, the public relied on whatever they read in the newspaper, and had nothing to contextualize whether information was true, spin or just plain false. Now we have the blogosphere, which is a necessity because of those shortcomings of traditional media. People need a place where they can get news that “cuts to the chase” and hasn’t been spun.

Bloggers also have recently had the opportunity to debunk the myth that they are unfounded and uninformed. Hamsher outlines just how much research and fact-checking that bloggers perform. She calls blogs a place where people can “collectively scratch their heads, search for documentation, and keep track of the spin and the spinners.”