New Media and the Port story

Daniel Henniger at Opinion Journal pretty much sums up how I feel about the Ports issue. Read it here.

It has been a truism for a century that press stereotypes set the tone ofmany public events. We used to call this the conventional wisdom; now it's a "narrative." By and large it's a neutral phenomenon. But in our jacked-up media age, first impressions--false or true--becomes powerful and hard to alter. Surely this is one reason Vice President Cheney's office resisted "releasing" the shooting incident into the media ozone.

I think this issue is the first real failure in new media. New media has been very successful lately. new media has been a reasonable voice when democrats and MSM were foaming. New media was responsible for revealng the truth with the CBS news documents, and have been very influencial over the past few years.

However, the Dubai posts story was a total failure for New media. New media has walked in lockstep to the hysteria of Dubai acquiring mere terminals at some of our ports. Now New Media is backstepping and trying to save face. Hugh Hewitt and Glenn Reynolds have now switched sides but are still blaming Bush for their initial mistake. IN contrast, Michele Malkin is still trying to hang on, and now argues that the Port issue is really about the potential sharing of the Port's security plan with a potential bad guy. This is essentially one step away from surrendering the issue. Sean Hannity also opposes the deal mostly because Dubai is populated by arabs and arabs attacked us on 9/11.

SC Dave Thompson continues to refer to the issue as Dubai "taking over our ports," when in reality Dubai is only taking over operations at some of the gates/terminals at some of the ports. We will see if Thompson comes around. He said he would research it. (Thompson has a good show. I recommend all JAS members to listen.

After Thompsons radio show, I heard the AM 1500 newscaster lady refer to Dubai paying $7 billion to take over the ports. This is also pure nonsense. The price is the cost for Dubai World that operates ports all over the world. $7 billion is for the whole company not just for the terminals at the six ports in the U.S.

The Dubai Port story is a failure for new media. It is a demonstration that New Media is susceptible to group think, just like the MSM.