The Internet: Making it Possible to Talk Back to your TV

News media were, for centuries, the hobbies of a few rich people. Dan Rather told you what you were to think and you shouted impotently at your TV. Millions of people heard Dan. Nobody heard you.

But then the internet, TV’s bastard child, came along and, like a sort of good Mordred, made it possible for some guys in their pajamas to say to millions of people that Dan Rather was documentably full of it. What a jolly and liberating feeling! You could actually live out this wonderful scene from Network:

And you could actually say it *to* the Network!

A reader exploits this new form of technological liberation as she writes to MSNBC:

To the Editor:

I just saw (on YouTube) the segment of ³The Ed Show² from August 6, 2009 in which Peter Schiff was a guest.

I couldn¹t believe my eyes or ears.

This is what passes for an interview on MSNBC? Good God. O¹Donnell ³interviewed² Schiff like a rabid dog interviews the mailman. After the first two questions, he did not allow his guest to get out more than six or seven words on any subject about which he was asked. O¹Donnell seemed to have one agenda: to create a narrative of failed Republican policies for Schiff and attach them firmly to him by not allowing him to say anything on camera about his own views. O¹Donnell did not ³interview² Schiff; he only offered Schiff the option of agreeing with the tired Republican canards and caricatures O¹Donnell proposed. I know nothing more about Schiff than I did before I watched the segment. Perhaps that was O¹Donnell¹s goal.

For the record, I am not a Republican or Democrat; I am an out-and-proud GD Independent. I listen to the socialists, the capitalists, the anarchists, the progressives, the traditionalists, the distributists, the Luddites, the transhumanists – if anyone can make a case to me that a certain idea seems reasonable, I¹ll consider it.

You have done your viewers a great disservice by attempting to discredit Schiff as a candidate before he even begins to campaign. O¹Donnell¹s belligerence, arrogance, incompetence, and disrespect of his guest demonstrate how deeply in the tank for the status quo you are, and how afraid you are of any idea (new or old) that challenges your worldview.

Unbiased reporting? Not so much.