a2lv.com

As I’m sure many were, I was consumed by news coverage of the presidential election, but if anything was transparent about the coverage, it was the outdated nature of the “journalistic standard.” In an attempt to present “both sides” of the story, I would often watch CNN’s Larry King Live or Shepard Smith on Fox News, or Keith Olberman on MSNBC, have partisan hacks and political analysts engaging in little more than a superficial exchange of “Joe-the-plumber-isms” or “redistributor-isms” while failing to really expose the “truth” behind any one of the day’s talking points.

I hadn’t really articulated that idea anywhere, or found confirmation that what I was watching was really nothing more than this black/white political commentary (pun somewhat intended) until I saw this:

Which really drives home the point about independent media and its role. The fact that the Obama campaign relied equally (or at least, significantly) on social “new” media, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and my.barackobama.com, has to be testament to the importance of the independent message being distributed via independent media (online and broadcast) to independent minds.

Just think about how I came across this video.

Reddit (aggregator/source) > Youtube (medium) > LinkTV (content provider/message)

And you, dear reader, complete the circle by watching it on my tiny little blog.

(Coincidentally, or not, Googling “barack obama social media” yields no mainstream media links in the front page of the search results)