Checks and Balances - The Fifth Estate

Today is blog action day. A day set aside for everyone that writes a blog to choose an issue and then try to raise awareness of that issue. Least ways that's the way I understand the assignment. My issue is the new political activism of the Internet.

Our founding fathers spent considerable time crafting this union, The United States of America. Several conventions were held prior to declaring independence from England, and a few more on how we should govern ourselves. First came the Articles of Confederation and when that wasn't working came the Constitution of the United States.

The beauty of our Constitution is its system of checks and balances. Three branches of government with specific powers to balance it out.

From the beginning, well actually before the beginning there was another check on the balance of power, from Ben Franklin's Poor Richards Almanac to Thomas Paine's Common sense, writers. News people kept a watchful eye on our governments whether that is King George or our president or our congress or our courts. There has always been a group of people watching and observing their society. Most try to objectively report the news of the day. But there always was that group whose job it was to interpret the news, the editors.

Today we are luck for as writers we don't have to wait for an editor to decide if our story will go out. Will it fit in the space available in an ink and paper daily newspaper? We don't have to wait while a producer cuts and edits what we have recorded to fit our videos between Vladimir Putin and Angelina Jolie or the impotence drug commercial.

No we can edit and produce ourselves. While sometimes we get that goofy guy tearfully pleading for people to leave Britney Spears alone, the Internet has also given us Daily KOS, and other sites that give voice to many. I post here at my own site but also on Daily KOS, the Democrat's Party Builder site and Barack Obama's blog site. I post comments at Keith Olbermann's Newshole as well as Arianna Huffington's The Huffington Post.

Many years ago a newspaper person whose name escapes me called the press the forth estate. Charging that the press had a responsibility to not just report what was easily scene in public. No, they had a responsibility to investigate, to delve into the hidden, even secret back story of the news.

This is how it always has been. There are many instances of this in journalistic history. The two best known might be Edward R. Murrow's interview with Sen. McCarthy that exposed a senator for the Chicken Little he was, running around telling people there was a communist under their beds. The second has to be Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein's reporting on that criminal enterprise we call the Nixon Administration. Good reporting and evaluation of the news around us does change things.

I remember the night Walter Cronkite ended his news broadcast with a condemnation of the Viet Nam War. It changed things immediately. War protesters suddenly had validation for what they were attempting to do, stopping the war. These are accomplishments, and there are many, many more of the forth estate.

Today the Internet is our fifth estate. Full of the bright and the dim witted for sure, but an estate none the less. It was the Internet that spread the word about the stained blue dress that resulted in the impeachment of a president. Then there are all the websites that are there to inform on one particular issue. Every non-profit or political action committee has a site in reality right next to your local pizza shop or sadly next to your neighborhood pedophile's web page, as we recently learned.

What is really best about the Internet is that hidden between Al's Auto Body Shop in Pocatello, Idaho and Zen for Dummies are two of the most important sites on the World Wide Web. They are: http://www.senate.gov/ and http://www.house.gov/, you can also find the White House web page but I suggest you wait until it is occupied by someone who cares and who can read. How ever you choose your voice need not ever be silent again. Write your own blog page or join the thousands who post or comment on other blogs. Don't want assault weapons on your street write your Senator or Congressman. Better still think locally, in Maryland all you need is right here the Maryland General Assembly's web page: http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/mdmanual/07leg/html/ga.html; County not fixing pot holes for me it is Anne Arundel County Department of Public works http://www.aacounty.org/DPW/index.cfm.

Really it is all just point and click and your voice will be heard. It might still be ignored but that's just the cynic in me.