WaPo's hit piece on Bill Roggio's freelance reporting in the Anbar province of Iraq (especially offensive to Roggio's readers and sponsors) prompted this interesting analysis from (fellow-Brit) Francis Turner, blogging at The Shadow of the Olive Tree. He suggests that the WaPo is doing what any "large incumbent company does when it sees a threat on the radar screen from a start up" by deliberately spreading "fear uncertainty and doubt" about the competition: Spreading FUD
Spreading 'fear, uncertainty and doubt' about the blogosphere in general, of course, is one way the MSM seeks to retain control of the dialog.
6 comments:
That was good, good comments too. Thanks for the link.
This has gotten a lot of attention on the blogs, at least Roggio defended himself.
I suppose they will go back to calling Omar CIA now.
"FUD", or 'fud', is rather brilliant, Julian. A new word for the new year!
buddy - it would be interesting to learn what counter-strategies start-ups use to deal with fud ('anti-fud' ?)
Interesting question--traditionally, it would be the 'leadership principle', no?
But there's so many layers in masscom, it's damn difficult to invoke (Henry's speech before Agincourt loses something in email).
Don't know quite how, but this has gotta be FUD-related.
Maybe women--being the more sympathetic gender--find FUD-salesmen more tolerable than do men?
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