Bill Bennett on the new media

RealClear Politics - Commentary:

"People now get their news and opinion on the Internet and relay it to talk radio. They then think about it, research it further, and discuss it on the Internet, in email, and in the national conversations that take place on shows like mine all the time,shows that cannot simply be marginalized as 'right wing radio', because they are not 'right wing'. Some are, in part, national dialogues. Yes there is right wing radio, and yes there is left wing radio but there is radio of another sort too, and too few elites have the first clue about what it is or what is happening there. "

"After the election, many statistics emerged. Perhaps the most interesting do not have to do with the mere shifts in the Catholic, Jewish, Black, or Hispanic votes. But, rather, why those shifts took place. Those shifts took place in part because of these statistics from the Pew Research Center: 41% voters say they got at least some of their news about the 2004 election online. Further, 21% relied on the Internet for most of their election news, nearly double the number in 2000. Yes, people cared about something more than job losses (as Ohio, which may have lost more jobs than any other state in the last four years, proved) but the information about the context of the job losses, as well as the something more, came from places other than the mainstream media."