real power

real power is the power to ignore. Big media used to have it, now they don't. Two terrific stories from real clear politics roundup:

How Daschle Got Blogged - John Fund, Wall St. Journal
All the News That Fits Their Spin - Chris Weinkopf, The American Enterprise

The point of the two is that media no longer is the gate keeper. They can no longer decide what is a story and what isn't. This is why all of those studies of media bias kept coming up empty. They looked for things that were said. They would count up the adjectives that came along with the names of conservatives and compared them to the ones that were paired with liberals and would hyperventilate about who was called "hard-line" and who was called a "committed activist" as if anyone out there cared who Dan Rather was telling them to like. The real power of the media was to be able to decide that Bush maybe missing a physical was news while Kerry's words coming in handy for the tortures of American POWs--the brothers that were not invited to report for duty at Kerrython--was not news. The most effective point at which to deal with political conflict is before it starts, as E. E. Shattschneider reminds us. The most effective way to bias the news it to decide that it isn't news.