I have recently been reading the book Feed by Mira Grant and it has really got me thinking about media. The story is all about zombies, politics, and media. I have not finished it yet but the main premise of the story is that the news sources that we currently value failed the world during the outbreak of Kellis-Amberlee turning people into zombies. While everything was in the early stages and more or less just small pockets of outbreaks the media was either too biased or too tightly censored to give people the information they really needed. News stations and newspapers were limited in what they could or wanted to say but the blogging community was there ready to provide the world with the real story. The narrator does mention that there is still the need to sift through the information that is not truthful or relevant but that blogs were where the news was. The narrator and her blogging team are hired to follow the political campaign of a senator running to get the republican presidential ticket. He is actually the first politician to ask for bloggers to be a part of his press team and not because it is popular but because he knows that this young lady and her team are known for being honest about what they do and see. It is no surprise that even in this imaginary future politicians and those that are a little older do not believe that bloggers are legitimate. However, they mostly don't like the fact that bloggers can not easily be censored. I just liked how this story shows the bias inherently engrained in our "unbiased" news sources and just how much control there is over what can be released.
It makes me wonder if one day my blog will be seen as a place to go for information, entertainment, or just to watch me poke semi-dead things with sticks and then run like hell.
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