This video was posted by a friend on my Facebook page yesterday.  I had to take a look.

Watching the video reminded me of a story I have been going to write for a while.  Here is an average, almost geeky, regional cover band, and in two months this video has topped six million hits.  It’s entertaining, no doubt—awesome and funny at the same time.  But that is not the point.  The point is that 20 years ago, this would still be a regional cover band—one that no one had ever heard about, much less seen.   But the internet has changed the way information is delivered to us.

Two of our frequent commenters from the Sheriff’s Department seem to have taken their marbles and run.  They are not happy with iePolitics for posting some of the ugly truth about their department.  They challenge us to report our stories in basically the same manner as mainstream media.

What they don’t get, and newspapers have not embraced, is that the public is tired of watered-down, politically correct news.  There is a reason blogs have become so popular and that is we print items newspapers are afraid to print.  We don’t have to play by the same rules as printed newspapers.

No one comes to iePolitics to read the same thing they can read in the Sun about the corruption scandal.  They come here to get the scoop or the other side.  It doesn’t matter if they love us or hate us, they want to hear what we have to say.  They can take it with a grain of salt or they can embrace it.  In the end they will find out we are a heck of a lot more accurate than the Sun or Press Enterprise.

We witnessed that throughout the Rex Gutierrez trial.  The Sun tried their damnedest to convict Rex before the trial ever took place.  Even their reporting of what occurred in the courtroom was extremely slanted.  We hear that Joe Nelson will say off the record there is no way Rex will ever be convicted.  But you would never know that reading his stories.  You would think Rex is going to prison for sure.

Some argue that by not printing names and sources, we do not have credibility.  Credibility for us does not come from naming sources; it comes from being proven correct time and again.  Our detractors want to believe we are wrong about the corruption scandal. When Mike Ramos goes down, they will call it a fluke. When Jim Erwin is found not guilty or all charges are dropped, it will be blamed on the “stupid” jurors or “crooked” judges.  When Jeff Burum is ultimately absolved of wrongdoing, it will be claimed he bought someone off.  We know what to expect for outcomes because we try to look at all the information available, not just what can be printed or is politically correct.  Our readers will not be shocked when Rex Gutierrez is not convicted after a second trial.

Our followers know we have been right in the past and are looking forward to finding out how accurate we are in the future.  For them, we are a credible source.  For others, it will take more time and that’s okay.  For some, green will always be blue and purple, orange.  We can’t do anything about the dense or the hateful so we just tolerate them.