That's just like your opinion, man....

In a recent article on Pajamas Media titled "The Power of New Media on the Presidency," blogger Steve Boriss tackled the issue of New Media and the effect it is having on this year’s election. Beside the obvious examples on how the vast amount of opinions being published are shaping American ideologies, Boriss makes a shocking, but very appropriate comparison to another point in history, when opinions from all angles were also being published.

"Once, America was served by an abundance of news outlets providing different opinions to different groups of the like-minded. That’s what French historian Alexis de Tocqueville saw in the early 1800’s when he marveled at how our 'Newspapers make associations, and associations make newspapers.' Before that, we lived in Thomas Jefferson’s America, noted for its unlimited and uninhibited free expression, lively debates in which ideas were attacked and defended, and a free people who thought for themselves rather than having 'the truth' as seen by elites imposed upon them."

-Steve Boriss, "The Power of Media on the Presidency"

I think that this is a great comparison and can be used to show Americans not to be scared of the vast amount of opinions available. If anything, they should be embraced, not as truth, but as a way of investigating and discovering more information on candidates.

For most of the 90's there was a stigma that the media had a liberal bias, but now with news shows, such as Hannity and Colmes, being accepted as opinion, there has been less talk of a bias media and young Americans are beginning to see a shift away from how their parents got news. They are starting to see media move towards this 19th century philosophy of opinion generated news.