Traditional intelligence gathered from leading newspapers is dead!
At the end of World War II there were 2,500 U.S.
foreign correspondents; today there are fewer than 250.
President John F. Kennedy once said he got
“far more out of the New York Times than the CIA.” Those were the
days when major U.S. newspapers and the three networks maintained foreign
bureaus staffed by prize-winning foreign correspondents all over the
world.
No more. At the end of World War II there were 2,500 U.S. foreign correspondents; today there are fewer than 250.
Constant trivia has afflicted U.S. media since the end of the Cold War (e.g., almost two years of O.J. Simpson that kept America’s collective eye off the international ball; infamous skater Tonya Harding, who got more airtime in a comparable news period than the fall of the Berlin Wall…Paris Hilton, whose mind-numbing, one-hour interview on “Larry King Live” reminded the millions who watched that addle-brained celebrity has now displaced merit-based fame.
For obvious reasons, open source information is no longer the traditional collection from open sources. This aspect of the intelligence business has become infinitely more complex. There are now 26,000 individual newspapers in the world that have to be monitored because one or two of them might contain a piece or two of a global terrorist puzzle. To complete the global Tower of Babel babble, there are 26,000 radio stations; 21,000 TV stations; 108 million Web sites; 75 million blogs; 56 million MySpace squatters; 100 million hits a day on YouTube; 8,000 news and information portals; 200 million photos on flickr.com, increasing at the rate of 5,000 per minute; 45,000 daily podcasts; and 2.5 million Web-enabled devices.
Some of which - by accident or intent - might provide useful information. Information that, now, is filtered through a batch of beginners, usually scared witless about stepping out of line and offending some political hack.
No more. At the end of World War II there were 2,500 U.S. foreign correspondents; today there are fewer than 250.
Constant trivia has afflicted U.S. media since the end of the Cold War (e.g., almost two years of O.J. Simpson that kept America’s collective eye off the international ball; infamous skater Tonya Harding, who got more airtime in a comparable news period than the fall of the Berlin Wall…Paris Hilton, whose mind-numbing, one-hour interview on “Larry King Live” reminded the millions who watched that addle-brained celebrity has now displaced merit-based fame.
For obvious reasons, open source information is no longer the traditional collection from open sources. This aspect of the intelligence business has become infinitely more complex. There are now 26,000 individual newspapers in the world that have to be monitored because one or two of them might contain a piece or two of a global terrorist puzzle. To complete the global Tower of Babel babble, there are 26,000 radio stations; 21,000 TV stations; 108 million Web sites; 75 million blogs; 56 million MySpace squatters; 100 million hits a day on YouTube; 8,000 news and information portals; 200 million photos on flickr.com, increasing at the rate of 5,000 per minute; 45,000 daily podcasts; and 2.5 million Web-enabled devices.
Some of which - by accident or intent - might provide useful information. Information that, now, is filtered through a batch of beginners, usually scared witless about stepping out of line and offending some political hack.
Posted: Thu - July 26, 2007 at 10:45 AM