"The Brainwashing of my Dad" and large swaths of Americans

Jen Senko's feature length documentary "The Brainwashing of my Dad" explores how right-wing media transformed her father from a loving, accepting father to an angry conservative. The documentary shows the creation and popularization of right-wing media from the role of Roger Ailes, the founder and former CEO of Fox News, in the presidential campaign of Richard Nixon to Hillary Clinton admonishing the "vast right-wing conspiracy" against her husband President Bill Clinton in 1998. 

The film couples authors and other experts on conservative media with lay-people, who she interviews via Skype, that speak about how their loved ones have been affected by right-wing media. Senko weaves these testimonials of individuals from around the country with her continuos narrative that explores how organizations such as Fox News and individuals like Rush Limbaugh gained millions of followers. While the film's continuos historical narrative is compelling, the most captivating aspect of the documentary lies within the short statements given by individuals via Skype. 
After the film-showing in Ithaca, NY, Senko — speaking via Skype — said that she got in touch with many of these individuals through her Kickstarter campaign. The use of the Skype interviews added a layer of humanity to the film that easily could have become overly focused on the politics behind the creation of the fanatic right-wing media.

The film does largely interview individuals from the left-side of the political spectrum. The Hollywood Reporter criticized the film by stating Senko "listens mostly to people who agree with her." However, many of the voices Senko focuses upon in her independent, crowdfunded documentary are one's that are often drowned out in mainstream media by the likes of Limbaugh, Fox News and friends. 

What Happens When Blogs get it Wrong

Howard Kurtz's article highlighting the power of blogs exhibits how bloggers are able to be uniquely critical of legacy media due to their ability to criticize and at times pontificate without editors filtering their thoughts. In the case of CBS and Dan Rather's missteps on a story about President George W. Bush's military record, some bloggers declared they had won with headlines parodying Star Wars: "Blogs Strike Again.

Yet, more than a decade later The Intercept established that it wasn't that Rather's story was factually inaccurate, more that it was incomplete and ill-timed. Here lies a a significant issue with bloggers and the blogging community as a whole.

While blogs were uniquely powerful in the case of "Memogate" they also were not beholden to editors or bounded by a journalistic standards to the truth. While its important that lay citizens engage in public discourse and blogging is a quick and powerful way to do so, did they truly do a public service in outing Rather's documents as unverifiable? Bloggers acted more like a mob with pitchforks awaiting to pierce the skin of the once-revered Dan Rather.

Does it matter that Rather's story was correct? Not to the bloggers, who often brim with what Kurtz calls "partisan passion." Until bloggers can morph into more than just a mob of often anonymous "fact-checkers" and into a community that focuses on greater context, they will still struggle to gain my trust.