Blogs became a front-running source of information during Tuesday’s election, as millions flocked to political blogs to get a taste of early exit poll numbers, available on blogs often hours before the more traditional news media doled them out.
Nevermind that early can also mean unchecked, or in some cases just plain wrong (some blogs suggested that there was bad news in store for Bush).
The most amazing thing is that this visceral source of information was influential enough to not only influence opinion, but, according to at least one source, it influenced the stock market, as the rumour about an impending Bush loss sparked a market sell-off.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Politically oriented Web logs began posting leaked exit poll data early yesterday afternoon, influencing media coverage of the race and underscoring the new medium’s continued emergence as an opinion-shaper. The willingness of the individuals who run the Internet sites, known as blogs, to post the data as soon as they could obtain them — by whatever means — gave them a leg up on the nation’s mainstream news organizations, which were bound by their own restrictions on disseminating exit-poll information. But the uncertain outcome of the election late into the night underscored how the high-profile new medium could ultimately prove vulnerable to the same gaffes that bedeviled the mainstream media four years ago.”
Wow, Wally, you said a mouthful.
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the problem was, as the actual results later showed, that the “bad news for bush” reports were in many cases the product of wishful thinking on the part of the reporting bloggers, and even some “mainstream” media.
Blogs became a front-running source of information during Tuesday’s election, as millions flocked to political blogs to get a taste of early exit poll numbers, available on blogs often hours before the more traditional news media doled them out….