One of the most interesting things intellectually about the rise of the net is how the gift economy is pushing into turf long dominated by the commodity economy. See here and here. Today this is particularly the case with news, and the future of our country may depend on it.

News used to be dominated by individuals who owned newspapers, magazines, and the like. Often the more specialized were financially dependent on their audience, as are magazines as diverse as The Nation and National Review. But even owners of mass circulation newspapers and other media owned them for many reasons, including at least in some cases a desire to serve the public. It wasn’t true for every owner, Rupert Murdoch is hardly the first of his kind. But it was usually enough to get the job done, at least minimally.

Corporatization of the media shifted incentives to only gaining as many readers as possible in order to maximize advertising revenue. Any corporation sacrificing revenue possibilities for other values could be taken over in hostile raids. In the name of efficiency, news bureaus were made “lean and mean” by cutting research, relying on press releases, and increasingly substituting soft news and “personalities” in place of “hard news” to attract watchers and readers. The more readers and watchers, the more could be charged for advertising. Consumers dominate and citizens are forgotten.

The result has been a political and social catastrophe for our country. A free press, it turns out, should not be dominated by marketplace values if it is to do its job of serving citizens. The only real points of light in the visual media today are the Daily Show, Colbert Report, and Olberman, who can get heavy handed, but doesn’t mind calling bullshit when he sees it. Otherwise we have the disadvantages of a state owned media without the advantage that because everyone knows it is a government tool, few believe it.

The web is transforming our access to reliable news. By eliminating the need for abundant capital to get into the news business, new motives have been empowered, motives like telling the truth, serving the public, and doing so in depth. These motives more closely resemble those of scientists more than those of corporate business: acclaim and recognition count for more than maximizing money income.

While today’s newspapers, let alone television, usually allow politicians and their spokespeople to lie without contradiction, the net is not so acvcommodating. A blogger wins acclaim largely by being accurate as well as sharing core values with his or her audience. And so when liberal hawk Michael Cohen, in defending Will Marshall, an even worse liberal hawk who had advocated invading Iraq claimed, there was “a defensible case for war with Iraq” his arguments were quickly examined for accuracy, and found utterly wanting.

Like former Senator Allen’s “Macaca moment” being spread throughout the blogosphere, ultimately rendering him unemployed, the overpaid pundits and incestuous members of the foreign policy establishment are now encountering strong and accurate criticism when they allow cozy personal relations and the need for covering their asses to get in the way of truth, let alone the well-being of our country. As well they should. Hundreds of thousands of people who did us no harm are dead, due to their incompetence. Yet the foreign policy “experts” Democrat and Republican alike, carefully exclude all whose warnings were proven right from access to policy debates they dominate. Clearly, connections and back scratching count for more than competence for these people pretending to serve their country.

For another example, the mainstream media repeated the lie that Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack were “war critics” who claimed that by visiting Iraq their eyes were opened about the success of Bush’s “surge.” No television broadcast reported they had supported both the war and the surge. These men had been war advocates all along. Glenn Greenwald among others did a superb job exploding the lies and deceptions of those who in the name of “bipartisanship” would continue the killing in our name. See here and here And he provides links for those seeking even more information.

The news has at least as much in common with science as it does with the market, much more. The web has provided a technological breakthrough freeing much reporting from the need to rely on government or corporate money to do the job. In the process the American public is slowly becoming better informed. Slowly, but hopefully rapidly enough to save our country.