With great good goes great risk

"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations, then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media." Sarah Palin fearing that freedom of the press abridges her rights for a politician to say anything without criticism.

As anyone who reads here knows, I write an opinion blog. It is my viewpoint on ideas-- sometimes using my life as an example. In all cases, I write the truth, as best I know, whether it is about my life or views-- but those views are naturally from my perspective. Nobody is without those viewpoints no matter what they say. Some express them more than others

As a media, blogging potentially will have a unique impact on this election. Good or bad? Small blogs like mine, or most I read, have minimal impacts, but some blogs have huge readerships and in some of those people believe things without checking. There is no responsibility to write the truth. No obligation to use facts.

At one time the public had newspapers, then radio and television to inform about what was going on. Those media often were no more regulated for truth, nor are they today, than the new frontier of the blog world.

When it comes time to learn about candidates, Palin's fears aside, It should be in all media buyer beware and that includes YouTube which is a powerful new tool for this election season. With YouTube, you can listen and watch someone like Representative Michelle Bachman as she spoke on the MSNBC's interview show, Hardball.

Bachman said it would be a good idea to investigate Congress to see if the members are pro or anti-American. Very few people saw her say this. When it got negative coverage, she promptly denied she said it-- until there it was. I had watched the original interview and what you see on Youtube is what it was. YouTube doesn't have to be that way. It can also have quotes clipped together out of order to create a totally different message. It's still buyer beware and look carefully for edit marks.

People can do an Internet search and get the transcripts from debates, speeches and compare them to what the candidate now says-- but again, do you trust the source? Someone can go back 5 years to some speech that a leader made and show how what they say now is the exact opposite. Internet is a phenomenal tool.

It also has the most possibilities for misuse. Can you trust blogs? It depends. A blog can be a good place to learn about opinions, to see ideas put together, to get a series of links that relate to a given topic, but a blog is a little propaganda machine that is, at least for now, totally unregulated.

Blogs form communities; and although there is some intermingling, for the most part, we go where we are comfortable and find like minded-folks. I don't think that's bad, but it's not all that is out there for ideas. I admit I don't visit or comment on far right blogs. I don't think they'd pay attention to any comment I made and they seem happily in agreement with each other. I don't see these communities as bad although they can make us think we are hearing the whole truth when we are getting a small fringe of it.

Worse for today are the emails that circulate. For some reason I don't get hate-filled, left wing emails. I am not sure if that's because they don't exist; or if it's that I have had more right wing friends than left wing. I have gotten way too many of the hate-filled right wing propaganda which I check with Google, Snopes or factcheck.org, and generally find they are filled with lies. I do check though and I do write back to whoever sent it to me with my opinion.

Some of these emails are total frauds (yes, not from Andy Rooney) and some lead the reader to think they are from someone who has special knowledge but a quick search online finds their name is like someone who maybe once did. Some take facts and distort them to make a case that they don't prove but it takes some checking to figure that out; and if the prejudice they are spreading is one that suits the reader, they won't go looking for how factual it really is.

I tried for awhile to understand why I was still getting the hate-Jane-Fonda type emails. I mean what does she have to do with today's election? Then I realized those emails are intended to stir up anger and fear. Whenever any email is about that, please consider ending its circuit with you. Nothing on either side is worth growing those negative emotions. No matter who wins this election, nobody really wins through growing hate, anger, and fear.