FUD??

 
L'Ombre de l'Olivier has a juicy post you ought not miss. He fisks the WaPo sneer — he terms it “a hit piece”, deservedly so — about Bill Roggio’s efforts to report from Iraq.

First he gives you the lay of the land: when the big guys want to destroy the smaller competition they put into operation something called FUD — i.e., spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt about the little guy’s product. It sounds like a solid technique and has probably worked well for companies whose integrity is already so compromised that a little more destruction isn’t going to add substantially to their karmic load.

But, as he points out, this time it’s not working for the legacy media. The only people who’ll go along with this kind of assassination were never going to read Roggio anyway. No loss there.

Yes…I am going to suggest you read the whole thing. For one thing, he’s a bonanza of links to pertinent information regarding this contretemps. For another, he has a good overview of the strategy and tactics involved:

This all looks like a classic case of the stodgy incumbent being shaken up by nimbler new competitors who are benefitting from some disruptive innovation and as I noted at the beginning, FUD is the standard response of the incumbent to this attack. Another response, which we may also see here, is for the incumbent to attempt the divide and conquer routine on its competitors. In this case the labelling of Roggio as a "conservative" may well be an attempt to get left wing citizen journalists to pile on in the hopes of splitting the threat. Now this doesn't in any way mean that all newspapers are about to go the way of the dodo and be replaced by bloggers but is it a sign of a vulnerability and tied with other vulnberabilites such as craigslist and ebay attacking the classified markets it could be a sign that the print parts of the MSM are about to die.

From his blog to God’s eyes. May the limbs of the MSM fall off one by one. May their heads roll down the rut they created by always running in place while they mouthed lie after lie after dissembling lie.

Oh never mind. Just make them go away. Make them get real jobs and let the people with the background expertise report on stories.

It sure would be a welcome change from the ignorant and superstitious “Henny-Penny-the-Sky is Falling” screech we’ve been subjected to for the last two generations. It's no wonder the rate of clinical depression has increased. All those damnable scare stories would be enough to do anyone in.

Imagine there are no journalists.
You don’t even need to try.
No doom and gloom from TV
And the printer’s ink’s run dry.
Imagine all the people
With Global warming threats all gone…

Imagine there’s no newsprint
It isn’t hard to do
No lies to spread, no venom,
No haters left to spew.
Imagine all the people
Free from TV news…

Well, you get the idea…go read L'Ombre de l'Olivier or I'll subject you to more execrable parody.