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Are Blogs the Future of Journalism?
jnf82 writes "Recently bloggers were part of the forces compelling Trent Lott to resign as Senate majority leader and Dan Rather to apologize to viewers on national television -- leaving many to ponder
if blogs could someday supplant traditional journalism. More likely they'll become a 'fifth estate' keeping watch over mainstream media and politics, says Dan Drezner and Henry Farrell in Foreign Policy Magazine's current issue. So will the new media revolution be blogged? 'No,' says Anna Marie Cox, author
of Wonkette, 'A revolution requires that
people leave their house.'"
They are the future of unaccountable editorializing.
Journalists go out and find out what's going on, they (hopefully) check their sources out and get confirmation and input from both sides and then report on it. Commentators -- and this includes bloggers -- are consumers of what journalists generate. They add (or, some might argue, remove) value by way of interpretation.
Remember way back in like 1996 when we all expected the internet to give voice to the common man? Create a new golden age in the spirit of the pamphlet writer that would have Patrick Henry and the rest of the printing press crew smiling down on us? Well, that's what the blogs are -- the fact that some are regularly insightful/interesting/ignorant/funny/biased enough to gain relative popularity should not obscure that fact or cause us to think they're something beyond that.
Aside from that, I think it's important not to get too carried away with this whole "we busted Dan Rather" thing. Frankly, it reminds me of when Drudge got out in front of the Monica Lewinski thing; he got the story out, sure, and suddenly we were hearing all about how internet media was going to come out and crush the slow lumbering ten-minute-ago types on TV. But, as it turned out, that was *one time* as opposed to the hundreds of times before and since where he's been completely off-base and his "Flash!" stories have vanished without a trace.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Thats the power of blogging and the weakness of blogging.
If you can use relevance algorithms you can find the good content, and that content has been the power behind a great deal of breaking news and commentary this year.
PageRank can serve as a de facto reputation system, combined with tools like Slash's own metamoderation.
In any case the death of large, centralized corporate media has been long overdue, our so-called bastions of truth have become nothing more than apologists for the status quo, be it in govt or business.
Radio didn't replace newspaper journalism, nor did television replace radio journalism. Each developed to the strengths of its medium.
Blogs are merely a form of journalism that best exploit the features of their medium.
Blogs are the future of op-ed, not journalism.
Journalism might be published on the web but it's still going to be more about facts than about opinions.
Blogs may become more popular, but I don't think they will completely supplant the traditional media. When you buy a newspaper, for example, part of what you pay for is the assumption that the stories are timely, accurate, unbiased, and fact-checked. With blogs, it's up to the reader to be discriminating.
So while some people may be happy reading all the information available to them and coming to their own conclusions, I think there will always be people who are willing to pay a traditional news service to separate the wheat from the chaff. There will probably also (unfortunately) be people who get all their "news" from blogs, but don't make the distinction between trustworthy and non-trustworthy sources. Since I would expect this to the majority of casual internet-readers, I worry that a lot of people will come away misinformed.
I think blogging does have a role to play as a check on the integrity of the traditional media, but I don't think it is anywhere near time for it to take over completely.
Perhaps unaccountable editorials say what needs to be said when no one else is willing to say it. Anonymity and lack of accountability can have their advantages.
Unfortunately, the 2004 USA Election has been a victory of FUD over Facts.
The mainstream forth estate news organizations, on both sides, have utterly failed to hold either Democrats or Republicans accountable for claims that diverge widely from the known facts. In cases where journalists have made a consistent argument, the news organization has allowed that position to be "shouted down" by political camp followers repeating the same lies over and over again though the same outlet. In those same replies, there was very rarely comments by the news organization when known facts obviously contradicted the opinion. Many news organizations seem unwilling to publicly chastise either party for continuing to avoid addressing serious questions when the facts do not concur. The result has been an outright failure of the concept of journalistic ethics.
Some alternative sources, be they partisan or bipartisan organizations, individuals, websites, documentaries, forums or the blogosphere, have done a better job at holding both sides accountable. Sadly, even the most popular alternative source reaches a small fraction of the audience covered by the mainstream media. However, to even that small fraction, those same sources have utterly failed to present an overall palatable, concise and coherent position to the opposing or undecided viewers.
The resulting output from both mainstream and alternative sources has only polarized each sides opinion of each other, further dividing the nation.
Democracy is effective only when a large majority of voters are capable of making an informed choice. In my opinion, the majority of voters, despite who they voted for, were badly served by those organizations who claim they are responsible for keeping the public informed. It's not as if the same could not be said for past elections in any country, but this election cycle the "Whopper" mud slinging has been so much worse than any election since the introduction of television.
What does this mean for the tech industry?
In a lot of ways, both sides campaigns are mirrored by Microsoft's unabated campaign of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt ( commonly referred to in the information technology sector by the acronym FUD ). Microsoft's advocates probably consider the use of the same strategy by both Democrats and Republicans a green light to continue to spread FUD, despite the evidence which contradicts the claims, including Microsoft's own internal research. Any forum attached to an article that even hints at Linux being used on the desktop results in a similar barrage of FUD that is familiar in form to that spouted by the political camp followers. Microsoft's advocates claim the same thing happens whenever Microsoft's record of security is mentioned.
Whether choosing a political or consumer platform, it is possible to make an informed choice when the mainstream political or technical media performs its role to certain ethical standards.
From the International Federation of Journalists:
You're posting on Slashdot (essentially a huge blog) and you claim you don't dedicate your time to blogging?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
As opposed to accountable editorializing? When's the last time you saw your local newspaper run a signed editorial?
I write in my journal
Uh, I hope you are making a joke. Today, we don't have accountability on the internet and much of what passes for "news" is simply rumor or urban legend.
As was demonstrated in Dan Rather's Memo flap, bloggers can sometimes be good fact checkers. In that instance people from all over the Internet scoured over what turned out to be fake documents. One person would offer his expertise and another would do the same. Eventually some people were able to contact real experts in the field and get them to verify that the documents were fake. Eventually the mainstream media took notice and the rest is history.
But bloggers are definitely not journalists. At best they offer their opinions on the news of the day, correct factual problems in news that was reported, and they also serve as a rallying point for other like-minded individuals. At worst though, blogs can be full of rumormongoring, hate and just noise. They won't be replacing any journalists any time soon, though their diligence may get one fired every now and then.
--
Sounds like a scam, but it works.
Free Flat Screens | Free iPod Photo | Free Nintendo DS
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
It's not like the "mainstream" media is going to be ousted due to bloggers. More often than not, a news blog will merely link offsite to a more mainstream news site. I really like Google News simply because it gives you plenty of options as to which news source you choose to listen to. Take Google News/ It's like a newspaper except that it's updated frequently (like, on a minute-by-minute basis), or a TV broadcast except you don't need to watch it when they tell you to.
The news media will still find ways of making money... usually the same way they always have: Advertising. Granted, there are problems with the blog system.... Even here for example, slashdot pulled a Silly user bug up to the front page of slashdot with a heading saying that Firefox was not as stable as we originally thought, thus sending a hint of FUD along with the release of Firefox.
That being said, at google news the story about Firefox's release and how it has started to kick IE's ass sat on the front page for a good number of days. In fact, as of this posting, it's still 11th on the Science/Tech page.
Crap. I realize this is starting to sound like a plug for Google News... but christ... IT'S GOOD. It ranks the same way that it ranks web pages, which means the news stories people are talking about the most get put on the front page. Again, this isn't always reliable, but what single news source is? At least with Google news they have a "all 523 related" link so you can try to corroborate between different news sources and see if you can inch out the truth from those.
Blogs just seem a smarter way to distribute news. The nice thing about this application of the internet (as opposed to say... MP3s) is that stuff like this is likely to get full backing from the news industry. After all, news blogs are just trying to serve the same purpose as the news media: Inform people as to what's going on in the world.
Karma: Non-Heinous
To me blogs are like the old time soap box in the park. Any yahoo can "take his turn" and everyone knows that what is said is one person's opinion. It is a valid and perhaps important method of communication but it lacks impartiality and fact-checking. It isn't hard hitting journalisim backed up with facts and the reputation of a corporation.
I'm not discounting blogs - they are an important part of my day. I just know that if I read something on 'em, I have to do my own checking.
Still, I think they fall short of being journalisim. Hell, people even sometimes read what I write! Me, mister nobody. And people read me.
If anything, they do provide some sort of equilibrium that's been lacking in the top-down, spoon fed to the masses nature of most traditional media sources.
In the old days, when the newspaper was wrong or simply not paying attention, you could send a pithy letter to the editor and hoped it gets published, depending on his humility and the risk he wants to take of losing a few kneejerk ignorant subscribers. In other words, fat chance.
Now, when the media's wrong, you have your own public forum to soundoff in any way you please--be it the one sentence the editor might publish, or the ten-page diatribe that would never go anywhere on its own. Likely, there will be others that think the same way you do. And when a simple Google search by the interested public, a government official, or that newspaper editor can connect those opinions by a simple query and actually look deeper into the story, we thus have the option for real media accountability. And that is the real power of blogging.
--sean
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
If we went back a few years, the blogging equivalent would be scrapbooking (which is also very big in certain areas). People are sharing their experiences, opinions, interesting events, reflections, etc. However, scrapbooking is still just a hobby.
Although the strict definition of journalism does apply to blogs (" The periodical collection and publication of current news; the business of managing, editing, or writing for, journals or newspapers; as, political journalism." according to dictionary.com), I think we'd all aggree that pure journalism should be unbiased and report purely on the events. Even though the mainstream media is biased to some degree, they still have to answer for misinformation, bad sources, etc. Blogs are even more biased, as we all saw during the past Presidential Election, and they have no accountability whatsoever. At best, they'd qualify as op-ed pieces in a news publication.
If bloggers could be held accountable for their stories, and if there was some kind of 'accreditation' for them, I think they could then be recognized as valid news sources and not just the ranting and raving of the few.
"We'll need 2000 crickets, 4 cans of Easy Cheese, and the fluid from 18 glowsticks for this plan to work...." - ph0n1c
So if I post a blog message saying that France's government is being fueled by pro-Arab extremists under a false name and refuse to give any sources, my post should still be considered to be valid news? After all, 'a lot' of 'Americans' 'seem to' think this way. Where did I get those phrases? I can't give out my sources. Who am I? I value my anonymity.
I heard Ana Marie's testimony live on C-Span radio, and was underwhelmed. She spoke her own personal point of view, which was that bloggers just get on the web and give their opinion on the news. She, her immediate audience, and evidently Slashdot editors, thought she was speaking for all bloggers. She was not speaking for blogs such as mine (underreported.com), thememoryhole.org, libertyforum.org, whatreallyhappened.com, unknownnews.net, propagandamatrix.com, prisonplanet.com, etc., etc. that just try to get at the truth the mass media ignores, hides, or even sometimes buries after the fact.
In terms more peaceful than the Battle, I personally have "left the house" since 2000 thanks to blogs. Disenchanted with Bush and Gore, I discovered the Constitution Party and have gathered ballot access signatures and/or worked the polls ever since (2000, 2002, and 2004). I don't believe I am alone in such active participation, especially if we take the high voter turnout this year as an indicator.
Another way bloggers and those with similar political affiliations have been "leaving the house" is get-togethers through meetup.com. Revolutions start with such meetings.
The lack of a physical presence in the U.S. over the 2004 vote fraud is distressing -- in contrast to Ukraine. ANSWER is planning a U.S. inaugural day permitted protest -- but that's too late. Something (and here I admit I am taking the passive voice) should have been arranged for prior to the electoral college vote. Wonkette may have a small point after all, but it's a cheap shot overall. We're a lot better off and more informed with the blogs, and people are getting more involved, not less.
No.
Next question, please.
The problem with blogs is that they don't go through any level of background checks and often don't provide reasonable sources. Not that mainstream media seems to do that these days either.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
The question though is do traditional journalists still subscribe to the ethics that they hold so dear? News is now "infotainment". The emphasis is on getting better viewer ratings etc rather than on getting the truth. Journalists are controlled by the corporations, whitehouse, military etc. They have the right to free speach, but they know that if they don't say the right things they won't get cooperation. If you get a bad name in the whitehouse or a corporation, it will take a little longer for your calls to be returned and you get scooped by someone else. Say the wrng things about what's happing in Iraq and your embedded journalist ends up joining the troops going off to wash trucks instead of the troops going into a nice night firefight with beautiful video images to send home.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
um, today.
Signed editorials run in most major newspapers on a daily basis.
The more I read or hear from Anna Marie Cox (wonkette), the more I'm beginning to think she's a twit:
Who the hell needs to leave a house to have a revolution? That's the stupidest non-sequiter bit of reasoning I've ever read! Most revolutions start with a letter or a manifesto or a little red book, not gadflying about or whatever it is she means by that rebuttal. An idea, written large, creates a revolution. And blogs are pretty damn good at trafficking in ideas.
Her roots are in journalism, yet she's quick to admit she got fired from several journalism jobs. So, why do we care what she thinks? I'm not sure if I should declare her inexpert or (like many journalists) biased. Either way, thumbs down.
She assuredly is not helping the larger media problem of distracting attention from real, substantive discussions about issues. For her, it's not just gab about process, but also sex talk thrown in. Sex sells, but disingenuously marketing oneself as a political wonk and getting famous by resorting to gossip and sex... that's lame.
Right here she even makes a point of saying she's trying to be like The Daily Show, yet she wanders around in the political weeds unable to provide any depth or insight about much more than gossip or process. Neither matters, and until she changes neither should she.
She refuses to allow comments on her blog. This, by itself, isn't a bad thing, but it seems to be a self-indulgence that is found more with journalists refusing to relenquish control. It's careful packaging (cough cough--marketing!) ahead of rhetoric and intelligent discourse.
In short: she's either ET or People Magazine for blogdom. Fluff, not substance. Or, as I said: she's a twit. If you want to really talk politics, marginalize her and let's move on. She's demonstrably no expert on politics or revolutionary change.
Incidentally, she's not alone in misunderstanding blogs: Pandora's box is open, and sometimes experts of the prior paradigm are too close to see things with perspective. Yes, there'll be a revolution. To think otherwise is akin to thinking 'that HTTP stuff' won't matter much. Blogs already are shaking up the publishing industry, and we're nowhere near full public awareness or full potential.
They are the future of unaccountable editorializing.
What's the difference?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
When you buy a newspaper, for example, part of what you pay for is the assumption that the stories are timely, accurate, unbiased, and fact-checked. With blogs, it's up to the reader to be discriminating.
I'm sorry, but that's part of the reason why I don't even get a newspaper anymore.
Hvae you not ever talked to anyone that has a story with something they have been involved in? Just about every time, the newspaper will get facts wrong - sometimes very significant facts. I'm not even talking about bias here, just the plain reality that most newspaper articles seem to have simple mistakes that go unremarked on mostly.
I would say the resposibility has always been on the reader to cast a critical eye on what is being reported. The newspapers offer a dangerous illusion that you can relax in this regard.
The good thing about blogs is that if they get something wrong - they will generally be corrected quickly. In reports coming from Iraq for example some bloggers thought they saw cannisters of Sarin gas in a picture from stockpiles captured, but other people pointed out quickly that the cannisters were in fact vials of serum to protect against Sarin, and they story died - in a matter of hours, with bloggers who reported it initally issuing updates correcting themselves. Compare and contrast to Rathergate (as the blogger world likes to refer to the incident) where Rather would not back off the story for weeks, or to things wrong in a newspaper that might see a small retraction a week later in some part of the paper you'd never read, and certainly not with the story you might have clipped out.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Blogs aren't reporting either. They're jouranlism. But what passes for "reporting" ("get the facts") these days is really "journalism" ("spin the interpretation"), and that's the problem.
And because nobody in the MSM fact-checks... How many times have hoax headlines from Fark and The Onion made the 6 o'clock news so far this year? (I can think at least three or four off the top of my head.)
> They aren't about reporting the news, they're about giving equal time to opposing viewpoints, even if one is completely wrong and not worth acknowledgement.
*applause*
Seriously, MSM folks. What's this "input from both sides" stuff? My gut reaction is "fuck that". If you're reporting the discovery of a new dinosaur fossil, there is no second side that says that we need to be wary of such discoveries because the Earth is only 6,000 years old. (If I want pseudoscience, I'll watch the Religion Channel's newscast.)
How the fuck many people died because some fuckwitted "journalist" decided he needed to "tell both sides" of a story about therapeutic touch as a cure for cancer? (If I want that, I'll watch the Discovery Channel these days. *sigh* :)
If you're reporting about phishing scams, or the reason Little Johnny has 100 "H0t P3n15 5lu+ 4x+iun" mails in his email box every day, there is no "both sides" of "ethikul small bidnidmen" working out of "home offices". The fact is that Little Johnny is getting buried in crap. (I can't get media coverage, because marketeers own (and pwn) the broadcast networks.)
And finally, if you're reporting that some Postscript printed from a Microsoft Word file was having been typed in 1970, there is no second side to the story. I don't give a flying fark whose signature you claim is on it, and I really don't give a fark about how many self-styled "andwriting experts" you can pay to claim that the signature resembles an original specimen -- because the memo itself is bogus, immediately rendering any possibility of an "other side" irrelevant. (And I need blogs here, because Emperor Dan Has No Clothes (if he had side pockets, he'd be a frog, or something), and nobody else in the MSM was willing to say it loud enough to make people listen.)
When I go to freerepublic.com, I know I'm gonna get the Republican spin. When I go to democraticunderground.com, I know I'm gonna get the Democratic spin. When one side is full of posters saying "Don't worry, this is a conspiracy, it'll all blow over", and the other side is saying "Hey, look at this neat fact that supports that guy's observation", I know which side is more likely to be correct in any given scenario.
Reading blogs makes interpreting the news an active process, not a passive one -- which is bad for the MSM business, (and probably unhealthy to me over the long term as we require more conformity out of our citizens), but it's so much fun I can't seem to stop :)
The fact that it's fun, more than anything else, is why I gave up on the MSM as anything other than a source of cheap laughs. (Oh, Dan, Dan, Dan... how I'm gonna miss you on election night 2008. You were responsible for at least twelve shots of bourbon during your coverage of '04, by far and away the most drinks-per-hour guy on the tube!)
From the article:
I suppose in a very very broad sense he is. But if some guy that get's a hot tip in the email from dEEptHroTz@hotmail.com and just throws it up as "news" is what makes a journalist, then I stand corrected.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
And whenever a reporter covers a story that I know about personally, I always see huge errors and misstatements, that would have been easily corrected if the reporter actually gave a shit.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Blogs, being unaccountable and sometimes anonymous, make the reader think. The reader is supposed to look at the contents critically and decided whether it's true, false, or a mixture of both. It's a two-way exercise, demanding more intellectual participation by the reader. Mainstream news purports itself to be accountable and non-anonymous, making the reader believe its entire contents, making the reader lazy and prone to judging things in black and white, leading to idiotic statements such as:
So if I post a blog message saying that France's government is being fueled by pro-Arab extremists under a false name and refuse to give any sources, my post should still be considered to be valid news?
If you say "'a lot' of 'Americans' 'seem to' think this way," I won't believe you immediately. But I will compare your statement with my other experiences with Americans, where most of them seem to be total idiots wrt news, and believe your assertion that Americans are stupid.
If you are wondering why people are turning out in droves in Ukrane and not here, perhaps it's because you see the results of people expereiencing REAL (nad abvious) election fraud, and not just electorial mistakes made here and there on an insignificant portion of ballots.
Were all the newstattions promoting Bush 24 hours a day before the election and ridiculing Kerry? Hardy. Were guys with truncheons coming into polling booths to beat the crap out of everyone there for voting Kerry? Hardly. Were internationl observers calling our election a sham? Don't think so!! Even Kerry was OK with the results and is not calling for further investigation.
Read up on what went down in Ukrane to see what REAL election theft looks like.
How do you filter out the crap? If you read all of the blogs (or even a large proportion of them, let alone a majority), you'll spend hours on it. If you get someone else to point you to a selection of blogs that provide a balanced set of differing but objective viewpoints, you're in the same situation that exists today in traditional media (a middleman is performing value judgements on the raw newsfeeds before presenting them to you). There is no easy solution to the problem of quantity; it's why journalism is set of professional full-time occupations.
According to your sig, it's the stage just before "???". I guess this means that in the future, all blogs will contain utter gibberish. Although it looks like this particular revolution has already happened.
Yeah, and it used to be the case that to make a purchase you had to leave your house. ... I'm bored of people who say that it's only revolution if people bleed, it's only activism if you spend a night in jail, it's only significant if it's significant in the particular way prescribed by the self-appointed arbiter of meaningfulness.
The original poster's first statement gives away the "blogosphere" mentality. Blogging to information is like dot-coms were to business. Like online companies, blogs are a great new tool that can have quicker turnaround than their brick-and-mortar, dead-tree counterparts. Some blogs, like some dot-coms, are quite good. Millions have sucked and will continue to suck.
The other thing that the two phenomenons have in common is the thousands of self-important pundits that come out of the woodwork claiming that their Pretty Good pet project is, in fact, Great. If anyone disagrees, the immediate response implies that the one disagreeing is disturbingly primitive and behind the times, and after all, who is he to judge their masterpiece anyway? If one can't give an intelligent counterexample, it always helps to introduce relativism into the argument.
There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
If journalism is going to become an opinion-fest, then the world is quickly coming to an end!
OK maybe a wee bit unrelated, but how did this annoying term come into common use for an online journal? I swear to god if I heard someone say the word Blog irl I'd either want to laugh or smack them. WTH kind of word is blog? It sounds like something a 2 year old would come up with.
Blogs may replace much of what we see as journalism in three significant ways.
1. The Chronicle Blog - Some respondants have created a false dichotomy between journalism and blogs asserting that journalists gather news while bloggers comment on the news. However, many journalists are taking advantage of the blog format to journal observations, developing stories and travelogs.
2. The Updatable Story - Print and broadcast media have a difficult time updating stories. Even on the web, new developments are managed by re-writing existing articles with updated information. The blog provides a much better vehicle for adding incremental updates to existing stories.
3. Full Service Journalism - Traditional journalism is based on a single story model. You read what one author has to deliver, and that's it. Blogs allow journalists to collect and disseminate a variety of resources related to a particular story. Articles from other writers, web-sites, commentary, facts and figures, and press releases all contribute to user friendly journalism.
The convience of blogs for both writers and readers will inevitably drive this format into more and more arenas of authorship.
For the most part, I agree. Weblogs do, at least, usually have a place for comments, though, so there's often space for people to criticise the content. It gets ambiguous if the owner starts censoring comments, and also if there's a very biased or unqualified audience. For this reason, I don't think many weblogs are very reliable.
But a lot of professional journalistic media isn't very different. Much television media, for instance, is very trashy. Even scarier is the fact that trashy media often does its best to present itself as respectable, and people fall for it. It frequently has an agenda that conflicts with providing reliable information, and most importantly it doesn't normally provide channels for criticism.
Respectable print media, at least, does allow for reader criticism and feedback. The two or three newspapers that I have some respect for do publish letters quite openly, including the ones that are critical of the paper's journalism. The letters are moderated to an extent, but my experience has been that they tend to publish anything within the stated rules, or at least acknowledge that they haven't published a letter and explain why.
The letters to the editor is a section that I almost always look at. This isn't because I have a lot of respect for random people's ideas, but because it's a good indication of when the paper's information is in dispute.
Weblogs aren't too far off print media. Although they usually don't have the journalistic staff, they still have ample space and design for immediately available feedback and criticism. Given the right conditions and if it's done well, a weblog could still be a good and reliable source of information. I don't know if any really exist at the moment, though. Slashdot certainly isn't one.
Journalists are accountable to the general public through their credibility. Random bloggers saying something means nothing because they have no credibility. Thus, they have essentially zero accountability. If someone reports regularly on a subject via a blog, then they are simply journalists using an electronic delivery mechanism that is fundamentally no different from any other electronic publishing mechanism (including electronic newspapers), and as such,, in an ideal world, would be no more or less acountable than a writer for a newspaper (who, if fired for writing a truthful story, could potentially use that as a springboard to a much better job at a competing paper).
In fact, the very things that you suggest makes bloggers more accountable actually make them less accountable. In the end, the only viable way to hold someone accountable for their speech is to stop listening to what they say. Over the years, thousands of journalists imprisoned in countries around the world for speaking the truth are the surest testament to the fact that imprisonment doesn't silence the truth, and if anything, makes their words more likely to be believed.
The laws protecting freedom of the press (in countries that have such laws), coupled with international pressure from groups such as Reporters Without Borders, combine to allow the truth to be published when forces that are otherwise more powerful would seek to suppress it. And yes, anonymity can provide that same protection, but at a significant loss of credibility, without which such reporting is of no more relevant than random anonymous coward comment postings on Slashdot.
Put another way, I enjoy reading Slashdot to find out the opinions of people with extensive knowledge in various areas. However, I would never use it as a primary source when writing a paper, and would always verify the info via an independent source. In much the same way, unless they are treated as a fundamentally protected form of a free press, blogs cannot ever hope to take the place of traditional journalism, nor held to the same standards of accountability.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
"The problem with blogs is that they don't go through any level of background checks and often don't provide reasonable sources."
But the beauty of blogs, at least those reasonably credible and well-read, is that they provide for for decentralized authentication. As blogger Ken Layne attested, "We can fact check your ass." In other words, the forces that kept the Trent Lott and Dan Rather stories alive when the mainstream news media were ready to let them rest were the aggregate voices of many bloggers and the sum of the facts they could collect. While any individual blogger does not have the information-gathering or verification resources of a large newspaper or network news division they do have each other. And an often voracious attachment to a story. They fact-check each other, obsessively link to multiple points of view on any given topic, disagree politely, attack cruelly, and eventually form reasoned arguments. Sometimes. Think of how a Slashdot story about a particular topic can bring an expert out of the woodwork with valuable experience to expound upon that very topic. (Yeah, yeah, hold your jokes. You know there's often that needle in the haystack if you can slog through the lame jokes and off-topic rants.)
If the problem of separating the wheat from the chaff is solved, and we don't develop an unhealthy attachment to sensationalism and partisan bickering, blogs can indeed become the watchdogs of the traditional media.
Rich white, socioeconomically homogeneous commentator set. Feh. There are smart mouthpieces for nearly every opinion in the spectrum. Surely all you've done is demonstrate that education is not a guarantor or prerequisite of clear thinking or righteousness.
For an example of internet posts full of disinformation see Mists, Twirp of the :)
@de_machina
You obviously don't understand the American voting system. The entire purpose of electronic voting machines is to eliminate the need for "obvious" vote fraud like physical violence.
You say an "insignificant portion" of ballots were affected. Of course you can't actually say this - there is no provision for verifying the totals are correct!
I just love our new American republic. Just push a button and trust your national Republican/Diebold/corporate axis to do all the vote tabulation and counting. Also make sure the corporate media ensures there are plenty of tools like yourself who defend it!
If you think about it, the new testiment of the christian bible reads like several blogs of the same events all over again. Perhaps if the rapture and all that crap from revelations comes true, blogs would make a good accounting of events.
:-P
I can't wait to read the book of CmdrTaco.
Do they really? Books are supposed to make readers think, yet we have people claiming Uncle Tom's Cabin is racist for its racial slurs despite the time period it was written in and the fact that a black (ex-)slave at the end of the book becomes the 'hero.'
Fahrenheit 9/11 was supposed to make people think, but instead you ended up with millions of people parading what was claimed in the movie to be a truth against the Bush administration covered up by mainstream media. End result? Mass hysteria against the Bush administration, the sweeping belief that Bush was going to lose the election by a landslide and months of sniping between republicans and democrats on a level previously unseen in the media.
Blogs don't make people think. They give people a first-person perspective on things; good, bad or indifferent. The decision whether or not to think about the information is up to individual readers who, so far, have decided NOT to do so.