Barrel Strength

I am not the first to notice that the Internet has changed the power relationship between the people and the media. Two cases in point: Ezra Levant, about whom Barrelstrength readers all know, and Daniel Hannan, the British MP who recently told off Gordon Brown.

Ezra’s righteous jihad against the Human Rights Commissions of Canada and its provinces was the first time in this country that a story that the mainstream media refused to cover or ignored became a national story solely because of the blogosphere. Every person speaking in a blog or preaching in a pulpit, as Father Raymond de Souza reminded us, was going to be made vulnerable to the insidious spread of chilling fear. The Rights Commissions are in net retreat, whether temporary or not is open to question.

I quote Father de Souza:

“Ezra decided to fight it because it was the right thing to do. But he went a step further than most. He set out to defeat the HRCs by exposing their tyranny. Anyone who reads Shakedown will be convinced that their defeat is essential for the survival of liberty in Canada. We are not yet three months into 2009, but Ezra may well have written the most important public affairs book this year.”

The other illustration comes from the well-spoken Member of the UK Parliament, Daniel Hannan, who recently gave the Prime Minister of Britain an elegant dressing down in the European parliament for his burdening the British nation with 20,000 pounds of new debt per capita. Hannan commented upon the fact that, for some reason, possibly because he had captured the zeitgeist of the day, the video he mounted of his rebuke went viral: 75,000 hits as of his writing on March 27th, 2009.

He writes:

“The idea that a speech in the European Parliament could become the single most popular video in the world, even if only for 48 hours, is faintly surreal. I mean, I’ve been making similar speeches all over my Home Counties constituency for the past decade, and posting them online for the better part of a year, attracting 700 or 800 hits if I’m lucky….”

“The episode serves to show how utterly and irretrievably the internet has changed politics. In 24 hours, 380,000 people had watched a video before a word appeared on the BBC or in any newspaper….The days when political journalists got to decide what was news are over. Ten or even five years ago, a dozen lobby correspondents would dictate the next day’s headlines. Now, millions of bloggers and commentators come to an aggregate view. ”

“The aggregate view” nicely encapsulates the phenomenon. Not three, or seven, but three hundred and seven hundred bloggers, and then three thousand and seven thousand viewers or readers establish a shared reality out there that escapes spin doctoring and editorial management.

Any number of instances in recent memory serve the same point. Every speech for a politician can become the irretrievable virally-spreading meltdown of reputation. Everything will be recorded, and will instantly reach a mass of people through uncontrolled channels, if it catches the interest of the moment. Hypocrisy will be outed. So will conviction, character, and reasonableness.

Now suppose you wanted to bring this explosion of democratic power under control, as many of the Left do, and not a few others besides. Particularly, how can the state bring this under control? I know the way it can be done. The law is at hand. It has existed for many decades. It governs significant sectors of the Canadian economy. It remains only to be used. The agency that would do it, or cause it to be done, is a seasoned practitioner enjoying broad public acceptance. I will be blogging about this in the coming weeks. The discretionary decisions of a very few people stand in the way of regulating the Internet for political content, balance, fairness, and religious harmony. The first person not known to me personally to suggest what law I am speaking of will receive a suitable prize.