Those words from political satirist, Jon Stewart, were from the more serious portion of his rally to "Restore Sanity and/or Fear", where he talks about inflammatory news commentary.
Keith Olbermann seemed to take those words to heart. The next day Olbermann made the decision to suspend his "Worst Person of the Week" segment, which had become a central and inflammatory portion of his show on MSNBC. Olbermann brought that segment back, repackaged as "(Not Really) The Worst Person", only to cover Sen. Jay Rockefeller's statement about MSNBC and Fox:
There's a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to Fox and to MSNBC, "Out. Off. End. Goodbye." It would be a big favor to political discourse. ~Sen. Jay Rockefeller.
We are all well aware of the news pundits' blame game in the recent tragedy in Tucson. This all showed us the underbelly of news commentary, as they all seemed to disregard the warnings of both Stewart and Rockefeller.
The hubris of 24-hour news, driven by their ratings, is their undoing. Olbermann seems to have the clairvoyance to see this and he is bowing out.
This, however, is nowhere near the end of this issue. Newspapers across the country are also seeing the writing on the wall as their subscriptions are dropping. Some commentary on that issue includes the environmentally-driven move away from the "dead tree" editions of major papers, but these media groups are also seeing a decrease in viewership online.
Where are these viewers going?
One theory is that there is a massive move towards Alternative Media and for good reason. One such alternative outlet is Alex Jones, a man labeled as a "conspiracy theorist". His network at Genesis Communications has exploded into the alternative media. Alex has a 4-hour daily radio show, that can be downloaded as podcasts, plus several websites. The three most popular websites are Infowars.com, PrisonPlanet.com and PrisonPlanetTV.com where you can watch his daily radio show as well as his many full-length documentaries.
Jones has spawned many other alternative news shows, such as Jack Blood's "Deadline Live", Doug Owen's economic news "Blacklisted News", Michael Herzog's "American Awakening" and even Gov. Jesse Ventura's "Conspiracy Theories".
What Mainstream media created in its 24-hour news was the institution of commentary. What is commentary? Short answer; it's what bar patrons do down at the local watering hole when they hash out society's woes over a glass of beer or wine. Having the Mainstream media institutionalize this act, took it away from the average citizen and made it their own. This leaves the average citizen to inject talking points from mainstream media, rather than reasoning the issues themselves. This created a void that Alternative Media is now filling.
I'm not suggesting that the average citizen is driven by conspiracy theories, nor am I suggesting that all alternative media is made up of conspiracy theorists. What Alex Jones brings to the table is a very diverse crowd of professionals in economics, politics and history who all talk about the issues in current and past events. Many of his guests are rather obscure in popular circles, but more and more they are now becoming mainstream. They talk about real issues and actually try to find solutions. Finding solutions, as Jon Stewart alludes to, is not on the agenda of Mainstream news commentary.
The attempt to come up with solutions is exactly what makes the Alternative Media so attractive. It is what was missing from the surrogate bar crowd, known as commentary news.
But what might make Alternative Media more dangerous than Mainstream Media is the very pejorative that it has been labelled: "Theorists". If people do not discern fact from fiction or apply objectivity to the alternative media, this could perpetuate what commentary started: Political Discourse.
If people can see alternative media as a complete circle of discussion, rather than mainstream media's open-ended discussion, then it can be a great tool for debate and, possibly, for solutions.
Alternative media treads where only bar patrons once treaded, into the realm of solving the world's problems. It is imperfect, but a progressive step in society. Reveal the problems and work together to fix them on a grand scale. In that view alternative media can be seen as a nationwide think-tank, involving everyone. One of Jones' main ideas in his show is to open up the program for callers for hours of discussion...and he doesn't screen any of those callers. He loves all the new directions that callers take the show.
If Keith Olbermann could see this, he could come back with his own alternative media show. He could be the harbinger of change in media. His action could lead others like Palin, Maddow, Beck, and all the other commentators to strike out into the fast-growing world of the alternative media. So long as they remember that they would have to offer up reasonable solutions to the problems they bring to the table.
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