Blog Vs News

There are a lot of similarities between ireport.com and cnn.com, however, the differences are what make them distinct, because CNN.com presents what is supposed to be relatively objective news that is helpful to anyone across the country, and the blogs on ireport are more of a subjective viewpoint, and this can be seen with the blogger including pictures of an obama/biden bumper sticker, or perhaps a mccain/palin one, depending on the viewpoint of the blogger, and the blogs also take on much more of a personal tone, which is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the readers understand the distinction between the two and don't take ireport.com as a news source.

CNN.com for example, is talking about the effects that the currently hotly debated 700 billion dollar government bailout plan will have on the US and global economy whether it is successful or not, whereas the bloggers are writing more out of emotion, and are writing a much more opinionated kind of article, about the possible reprecussions of this bailout, in terms of the average man, and while both can be helpful, it is important to remember that the people at CNN.com are professionals, wheras the blogger on ireport could just as easily be the classmate sitting next to you.

Web 2.0 truth

There are a few different advantages to Web 2.0 technologies, and the biggest of those is that it gives a voice to a large group of people who before the advent of these changes would have never had a chance to have their views heard, as well as allowing political candidates a voice beyond the mass media. For Example, John McCain has openly admitted that he does not use computers, whereas Barack Obama not only e-mails, but there is also a blog maintained by his campaign, which gives them an opportunity to speak directly to people on the internet, because mass media can create a distorted view, especially of particular incidents. This gives a man at a computer an impressive voice, if in fact he is speaking on topics that people are concerned about, and is one of the true benefits of web 2.0, but is also one of the dangers, because with the mass media, there is at least peer review, and an untruth will usually be discredited fairly quickly, as in the instance of Working-Families for Wal Mart, and as long as this kind of expose continues, it may turn these kind of newer technologies into a viable source for news.

Web 2.0 Untruth

The fallacy of Web 2.0 is that while many purport it to be the new wave of information, it has created a dangerous situation on the internet. This is because this "revolution" is putting a more personal, objective kind of face on the same corporate platitudes that have always been spewed by corporate America. One of the more blatant examples of this is the case of "Working Families for Wal-Mart", a group that maintains a blog and a website that is used to praise Wal-Mart's ideals and work conditions, and is a seemingly grass-roots organization. They often fight against union intervention, and when they emerged in 2005, seemed to briefly put a human face on an enormous corporation that is well known for paying low wages and at times defying United States labor laws. The reality of Working Families of Wal-Mart is that they are a group that was created by Edelman Public Relations, a company that is well known for attempting to craft new images for massive companies such as Wal-Mart and Microsoft. The organization is not a non-profit, which means they are not required to disclose funding sources, and this is exactly one of the dangers of Web 2.0, because they created an entirely separate and for a time, distinct entity that was wholly controlled by corporate interests in an attempt at economic propaganda, as well as to undermine attempts by employees to create a workers union, or any attempt at formation of workers groups. This kind of deceit may also be what in the long run is the downfall of Web 2.0, this ability for any person or group to speak to the world in whatever voice they choose.