Bloggers On The Bus

A Conversation About Media and Politics in the Digital Age

July 16, 2009, 5:00pm – 6:30pm

About This Event

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Last November’s elections broke barriers and made history on a number of fronts, making it one of the most transformative elections our nation has ever seen. One of the most groundbreaking changes was in the way Americans received and processed vital information about the most pressing issues—for the first time in American history, blogs, social networking sites, and other web-based media were the primary sources of information for many voters. They helped shape individual opinions and the public discourse at large.

While the Internet has proven to be instrumental in disseminating intelligent, well-developed information on public policy, it has unfortunately also been a medium for disseminating hateful rhetoric and promoting the politics of fear. The progressive movement’s challenge moving forward is to not only help curtail the spread of this inaccurate information, but also seize this new media’s benefits to help promote a factual, intelligent, and broad progressive policy agenda.

Please join us for the Internet Advocacy Roundtable on Thursday, July 16 from 5:00-6:30 p.m. This month’s discussion will moderated by Media Matters founder and CEO David Brock and feature Media Matters Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert and ThinkProgress.org Editor-in-Chief Faiz Shakir. They will discuss blogs and other new media’s impact on the public discourse, and how the progressive movement can use new media to help promote a broad policy agenda in 2009.

To stream this event live, click here.

Speakers:
Eric Boehlert, Senior Fellow, Media Matters
Faiz Shakir, Editor in Chief, ThinkProgress.org

Moderator:
David Brock, Founder and CEO, Media Matters

Location

Center for American Progress
1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

Biographies

Eric Boehlert just released a new book, Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press, which is the most definitive look at the netroots movement to date. Bloggers on the Bus exposes the traditional press’ outdated stereotypes about bloggers and thoroughly documents bloggers’ increasing influence on journalism and politics. 

Faiz Shakir is the Research Director at the Center for American Progress and serves as Editor in Chief of ThinkProgress.org and The Progress Report. His writings have appeared in the Jerusalem Post and on Salon.com. Faiz has also regularly appeared on CNN, Fox News, and CNBC.

David Brock is the CEO and founder of Media Matters for America, a cutting-edge progressive media research and information center dedicated to holding our news media accountable. David's leadership at Media Matters has had a profound impact on the national media debate. Media Matters has used fact-based analysis and research to provide much-needed accountability over a conservative-dominated national media. Since its inception in 2004 Media Matters has released over 10,000 research items debunking conservative misinformation in the media.

Brock is also the author or coauthor of five political books, including The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy (Crown, May 2004). In his preceding book, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative (Crown, March 2002), a 2002 New York Times best-selling political memoir, he chronicled his years as a conservative media insider. Brock's latest book, Free Ride: John McCain and the Media (Vintage Anchor, April 2008), written with Paul Waldman, is a case study of the national media's uniquely favorable treatment of John McCain over the course of his career and was recently named a Washington Post best seller.

Brock was the recipient of the New Democrat Network's first award for political entrepreneurship. He currently serves on the board of The Progressive Legislative Action Network, an organization created to support progressive state legislators, and on the editorial advisory board of the Progressive Book Club.