Within 12 hours of the posting of the Starr report, polls that had formerly shown heavy public support for Clinton did an almost instant flip-flop. The Web instantly became the leading information-delivery mechanism. Delivering this lengthy report instantly to any spot worldwide couldn't have been accomplished in any other way. TV is mostly regional and is actually incompatible from country to country. Radio isn't a player anymore.
Newspapers suffer from regionality and limited distribution.
If this report hadn't been distributed on the Web, it would have been summarized and analyzed by the questionable middlemen. Editors, many of whom in the larger markets are sheepish about offending the public, would surely have avoided much discussion of the more explicit aspects of the report. Many mainstream pundits argue that the American public is losing confidence in traditional news media that seem more concerned with political correctness than truth. And more disturbing is the fact that the traditional news media jump from story to story with little follow-up on past stories. There is no continuity.