Slashdot Mirror
In the Unverified Digital World, Are Journalists and Bloggers Equal?
oztechmuse (2323576) writes "As the source of news moves increasingly away from traditional channels to the millions of people carrying mobile phones and sharing commentary, photos and video on social networks, the distinction between journalists and bloggers has become increasingly blurred. Making sense of this type of information has been as much a challenge for journalists as it has bloggers. Journalists, like bloggers, have had to learn new skills in working in this environment. Highlighting this has been the release of the Verification Handbook which attempts to educate journalists in how to process user-generated content in the form of videos or images acknowledging that much of the reporting about situations, especially emergency ones, comes from the public. The techniques outlined are accessible to anyone reporting on a story, adding to the eroding gap between bloggers and journalists."
Shield laws mean that professional (read: attached to a major news organization) journalists will always be more legitimate than bloggers, as they have legal protections that bloggers can only dream about.
Journalists (as the world's professional content creators) versus Bloggers (the world's amateur - sometimes very much so - content creators) are similar in the same way that the guy hacking together application code in his bedroom in his spare time is the same as the salaried analyst programmer employed full time to do that.
They both produce content, and the amateur may produce content which would be considered of an acceptable standard by the professional. But the average amateur produces content which is of a much lower standard than the average professional (no, I have no specific citation to prove that, other than my own experience of working with both types on projects).
And all people should demand freedom of speech, regardless of their profession, or lack thereof.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Rather than asking whether they are equal, we should instead think in terms of how can we verify what they're worth? Is a source quantifiable? If not, it makes little sense to consider whether one type of source is equal to another. Just being able to identify what type of source a source is may be difficult or impossible.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Journals and blogs are simply means of delivering a message. Journalists and bloggers are distinct in how much they allow their personal views affect their message. Whoever writes a well-researched article, provides multiple points of view, concise arguments and doesn't stray from the virtues of reason is a journalist. A blogger can be anyone with an easily readable writing style, who provides the readers with quips, thoughts, personal observations, anecdotes, opinions and beliefs.
In other words, no matter it it's NYT or a wordpress blog, journalists are the people following journalistic ethics and standards. The rest are bloggers.
To answer the question, yes, they are equal. They are both pretty much worthless.
Kinda like this comment.
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
All things being equal in the present day. They are way closer to equal[utility] than they should be.
Both tend to paint opinion as fact and call it news. Bloggers usually further their own agenda, while "news" orgs are forwarding someone else's[Dem/Rep/ misc proxy for monied interests running counter to your own].
It all comes down to which of your sources has interests most aligned with your own. That is much easier to guest-i-mate with non-consolidated and smaller sources. It's much easier to buy a handful of outlets, than it is to coerce and compromise random bloggers.[most of the time]
The utility of news and is based on reputation. It does not matter any longer if reputation is based on the publisher or the author. Reputation can be easily researched by readers.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Seems to me that myths were presented successfully as facts back when dead-tree, radio, and television ruled the roost. Back then, you could scream about falsehoods in newspapers until you turned blue and your word only carried about as far as your voice. Today one can do a good Fisking of most of those articles and get some traction in a wider circle. The biggest problem is the successful rent-seeking efforts of larger, traditional media organizations wooing politicians into granting them special protections that are not afforded to anybody else performing the same tasks as them.
Time Bomber the Book coming soon.
It seems that the missing link between blogging and conventional journalism could be a marketplace that enables bloggers to publish content in the mainstream media. Major media sites commonly link to blogs, and some bloggers do op-eds from time to time, but this cross-pollination seems to be the exception, not the rule. A Google Play-like marketplace in which bloggers sell their written pieces (or make them available for free), and from which news service purchases such pieces would eliminate the distinction between 'freelance journalist' and 'blogger.'
On an unrelated note, the article (outside of the title) doesn't waste much time comparing blogging and conventional journalism.
It seems that a significant fraction of today's political journalists view their job as shilling for liberal political causes, to the point they unapologetically get verifiable facts wrong or put off reporting on "inconvenient" stories until after elections.
At least bloggers are generally honest enough to state their political biases up front.
This story brought to you by Slashdot, which barely attempts to editing.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Just like a journalist...
When Faux News Opinion counts as "News", yes.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Bloggers and Journalists are not mutually exclusive labels. Some bloggers perform journalism, or if you'd prefer, some journalists blog.
"Journalism is a method of inquiry and literary style that aims to provide a service to the public by the dissemination and analysis of news and other information." [Wikipedia]
Journalism is the action (and a journalist one who performs the action), while a blog is a medium (and a blogger one who posts in that medium). Not all bloggers are journalists, not all journalists are bloggers. It's like asking 'are people on TV and Journalists equal?'
We've all seen the professionals get it wrong. Sometimes very wrong.
Furthermore, dedicated ammatuers who focus on a particular subject often have quicker and better coverage of news on that topic. Professional mass media news often over simplifies news, sometimes to the point of almost losing the story.
Then we've all seen the bias of professional news organizations. Freedom of the press is for whoever owns one. Look at how all mainstream mass media was completely silent about SOPA until the Internet forced the issue into the public eye. Then, the professional journalists all told whatever story their owners wanted us to hear.
I'm not saying that professional journalism is all bad. It's just not all good either. And the same for ammatuers. It is up to you to decide what news sources you trust. Some professionals have, and should rightfully so, not be given any trust.
We now have news channels that are more about info-tainment and the most fantastical splashy graphics than they are about real news. Closing down bureaus and getting rid of real investigative reporters because it is cheaper to just do talking heads? Then we also have professional news sources whose entire purpose is to promote a particular ideology. So maybe, increasingly, the only difference between the ammatuers and professionals is how big a budget they have? Now TV news anchors have to be fashion models. But in the past they had to be journalists who eventually earned the position of anchor. They weren't models, they just had to look okay.
So I find arguments about the goodness of professional news over news on the internet to be less than completely convincing.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
which attempts to education journalists in how to process
We should attempts to education the editors in how to process a story!
Enigma
Anyone that recites the party line, any party line, isn't a journalist. Anyone who tries to provide accurate information, or attempts to make people consider things from a different point of view is a journalist.
Since the cost of publication has dropped to almost nothing, the quality of information or writing is no longer relevant.
If I write a blog about how my neighbors cat chased my son into the garage the other day, you may not care. But that doesn't make it any less news. If I write it really badly, it still doesn't make it any less news.
If on the other hand, I just service as a mouth piece for some set of beliefs or another, then it's a press release, not journalism.
Would you trust, Say, Fox News to report honestly on Exxon if high-ranking Fox News people had relatives working in Exxon's boardroom?
Then why trust reporting when their relatives and spouses work as advisers for the White House?
Remember, JournoList had more than 400 members who were working to give mainstream news coverage a left-wing slant.
I've often thought about what differentiates a blogger from a journalist. To suggest that there is no difference is demeaning to journalists -- and yes, I know there are lots of those are hardly worthy of the name, but to just flatly equate the two is unjust to the professional, fact-checking variety that is supposed to be the standard.
Before the rise of the internet, there was no platform for any old person to put their opinion in print (digital or otherwise) and reach a broad audience. Sure, you could print up pamphlets and hand them out on street corners, but wide distribution was gated by publishers. We've removed a lot of middlemen between content producers and content consumers, and a lot of that is probably good. But one of the benefits (and problems in some cases) was that some of those middlemen provided filtering. It's great that we no longer have that filtering in one aspect; it's allowed a lot of things that the 'powers that be' judged uninteresting and turned out not to be so. But it also means that a lot of pure noise that was filtered out is now crowding out the signal in some cases.
Part of the problem journalism faces is that in order to compete on speed, they're skipping steps. There was a time when a juicy story was held back while they triple-checked it. That happens less & less because time-to-print (or broadcast, etc.) has become the defining metric. When you're competing with someone who doesn't check anything they put up, you start to look pretty follow-the-leaders when you post after fact-checking.
So while some of this is definitely a problem for journalists, namely how to stay relevant in a world of instant publication, a lot of this is our fault too. If we were willing to wait a bit, preferring immediately accuracy instead of immediate attention grabbing, it would give those who want to do things right the breathing room to verify. So long as we're all grabbing click bait the second its available, we're screaming loud and clear to the conglomerates that run our news media that its far more important to be first than accurate.
Wood Shavings!
- Godai
...over other people having free speech and disrupting their narratives...
Yes, but it shouldn't be. The utility of a news story should be in the verifiable information that is conveyed in the story. "Reputation" can be of some use, but it is far too easy to buy a reputation or flim flam your way into an undeserved good reputation. What might be useful in today's world is to have a linked list of facts and their sources associated with the article. Like what is required in a scholarly article, but with citations that do not interrupt the flow of the story.
...for evidence of this, just look at how the recent Crimea issue has been handled.
No one raised a finger when Kosovo was carving itself out of Yugoslavia. No body is asking the tough questions. No body from the big media houses sees the USA's double standards...
It's not that bloggers are great, but what passes for journalism in the USA is little more than a bad joke. Fact checking? Broad knowledge of the world? Deep thought? When was the last time you saw any of that from a "professional" mainstream media journalist? Even the Economist has become hopelessly myopic and superficial.
That's not the only reason. Intellectually, most of the journalism majors I met in college were fighting it out with education majors for last place. Try and explain something as complex as resource depletion or peak oil, and their heads looked like they'd explode.
Consequently I find that I read bloggers with great enthusiasm (e.g. nakedcapitalism.com), while simply rolling my eyes at the "news" on MSNBC, Fox or NPR.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
A lot of people (most people, actually) tend to believe that the usage of the term in the First Amendment implies the "fourth estate," a characterization of the 'professional' journalistic media; however, according to etymonline.com, the term "the press" was not used in reference to professional journalistic endeavors (i.e., the 'fourth estate') until the mid-1820's, long after the Constitution was written and ratified. Prior to that, the term "press" in literary reference was commonly accepted to mean the printing press.
Thus, it stands to reason that the freedom our founding fathers were protecting in the First Amendment is not the freedom of the fourth estate, but rather the freedom of the common man to disseminate information freely, be it in blog, newspaper, or other format.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
http://www.aljazeera.com/progr...
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
Hold it right there. The whole issue here has jack shit to do with blogging (which is what these sort of people mean by "digital").
All the same blurriness equally applies to the older mediums, such as Fox News "reporting" on pretty much any topic, or Newsweek magazine writing, as exhibited by their didn't-even-try approach about Bitcoin. Bullshit is everywhere, and it's not even a recent phenomenon (people were bitching about this literally a century ago).
The only "new challenge" that is relevant here, has to do with antiquated (yet also fairly recent) "shield laws" which artificially try to apply rights to some people and not others, in order to chill free speech. This is all about government and its defiance of society's reality, and doesn't really have anything to do with journalism.
These days journalism is a lot of opinion and drama designed to lure readers or television viewers. Very often the stories lack fact checking and verification and are subject to quite a bit of hyperbole. Good, objective journalism has died with a large thank you to Rupert Murdoch who promoted the news as a business versus a true information source.
In what way are they different anywhere?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
When you understand that the freedom of the press has almost nothing to do with the rights of journalists/reporters. It is referring to the printing press, not "The Press" or "The Media." It protects the right of reporters and bloggers to publish their free speech.
'verified' is the pitch? creation tends to move in a positive direction constantly whereas MANic WMD on credit viagranism is always on count(us)down mode with deceptive information etc to generate fear & disable any notion of spiritual sandboxing...
When do journalist verify fact anymore?
At least in America, "the press" means "the printing press" and by extension any technology which accomplishes the same purpose as the printing press, i.e. the dissemination of information. Blogs would certainly fall into this category. You can either believe me or read this very convincing paper by Eugene Volokh: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa... So sorry, "media," you aren't "the press." The protection is for the medium, not a particular type of messenger.
Censor them all, and let the NSA sort them out.
-kgj
Not all writers are journalists.
Those we know as journalists have editors, one-time or current peers, more experienced, who can tell them when they're running afoul of what good journalism is.
Those we know as bloggers have nothing more than their own judgement to guide them, which is why journalists grew editors.
Perhaps someday the two will merge, hopefully by bloggers stepping up, and not by journalists stepping down.
Kinda like in science, where you don't get to just throw up any old idea and call it science. You need to test it against replicable observations.
The 9th circuit was mostly making sure people could get press passes and there would not be an army of bloggers filing federal lawsuits.
Case in point? A million ideas about how flight 370 went down. Two weeks of egalitarian, drive-by speculation, and in the end, only one verifiable answer.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Retarded tweets are the most supreme of all.
So what you're saying is . . . those news organs (MSNBC, Fox, NPR) don't share your world view?
WMDs in Iraq?
"Fake but accurate" forgeries about Bush II's National Guard service?
Tell me again about the "standards" professional "journalists" have.
I'd say a better question is what is the average level of quality produced.
Even using that metric, your conclusion is flawed.
CNN may post "Child Run Down by Drunk Driver,"
Or that a plane was swallowed by a black hole...
you generally don't have to slog through a million pages of "My Cat Did the CUTEST THING!!!"
Hint: BuzzFeed is not a blog, and most blogs do not have that problem. They have some advertising on the side but so do most commercial news sites (CNN does on the home page).
The other major problem has been that many commercial news sources have been count countless times now posting inaccurate stories. Bloggers at this point, overall, are MUCH more careful with accuracy and careful presentation of facts. Commercial news sources are much more pressured by a deadline to get ANYTHING out.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Unfortunately, very often facts are never verified, and dogma-truths (religionpolitics) are very often regurgitated by fools, bigots, and frauds.
I wish journalist, clergy, and politicians could be held to a higher standard, but as broadcast/print news, US, EU, RU, CN politicians, and all religions globally prove there is no higher calling than bullsh_t power.
IOW: Holding Citizens/bloggers to any standard for speech/information would be wrong and draconian. Holding journalist, scientist, businesses, clergy, politicians and their institutions/businesses to any standard of facts, truth, ethics would help US, EU, and Humanity.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Journalists, because they're being paid, are more likely to be pushing an agenda - the agenda of who is paying them.
Journalists, being professionals, and having their work copy-edited, are more likely to use social-engineering in their writing in order to push their agenda.
The great demotivational poster: Bloggers, Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few.
those news organs (MSNBC, Fox, NPR) don't share your world view
I happen to agree with 2 of the three (I will leave it as an exercise to the reader which 2). However, I watch/listen to none of them. They all pander to the worst sort of human emotion, fear.
For the simple fact that 'news' is rarely 'news'. It is outrage. Look no further than the summary of this discussion. It is a question. A leading question at that. It is meant to sell you outrage. In this case to draw out the 'freedom of speech' guys, and the 'quality of journalist' guys to argue. If you think you are getting any sort of news out of these stations conduct this simple experiment. It only takes about a week and 2-3 hours of doing what you do already 'watch the news'. Count the commercials and the length. Then extrapolate what they are really selling. Why they have leading headlines. You are not the consumer you are the product for the people paying the bills. Outrage sells and brings eyeballs.
Want to see something even cooler? Go on a road trip. Listen to NPR the whole way. You will notice something. All the stations sell the news as their own. Even the same story read word for word. Most 'news' is filler from AP/Reuters read in such a way to make you think they are actually doing something and adding value. NPR does an extra twist by reading stuff from BBC sometimes.
it is not rationed out to journalists who have been ordained by editors and publishers. What we need are good whistle blower protection laws, not shield laws.
As someone who made a modest living for 30 years as a "journalist" (or whatever you want to call me), I can summarize the most important thing I learned in 30 seconds:
Every time you attack someone, always call him to get his side.
(Variation 1: Every time you write something that you strongly believe, always call somebody on the other side to find out why they disagree with you.)
That's it. If you follow that rule, you'll always get a decent story.
the first amendment is a right, not a privilege.
Are Journalists and Bloggers Equal? - Hell NO!
99.9% of bloggers are just ranting or copy/paste'ing someone else stuff.
In short: Bloggers, you all suck!
Read (watch or listen) to about any article on a subject that you have a working understanding of, done by journalists. Then read a blog by a real "subject matter expert" and which one will be more informative? As the old saying goes, "if you know what they write is incorrect, why believe what they write on other subjects?"
Passionately Indifferent
Because what passes for "journalism" today is no better than a random blogger. No research done, and basically 100% opinion pieces.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The question should focus specifically on quality, not freedom. That is, bloggers, journalists, pamphleteers and tinfoil-hat-wearing-street-corner-ranting loonies have the same freedom to report what they consider to be news. Governments, and especially the courts, should scrupulously avoid anointing any group as "the Press" or claiming one group or another has a more fundamental free speech right. The press are and always have been made up of the people.
Quality, however, is another matter. We might expect employed journalists to produce higher quality articles in terms of polished prose, researched quotes and balanced perspective due to a professional commitment and having full-time employment to focus on the craft. We'd be very much mistaken, though, if we naively assume all journalists are professionals and all bloggers are hacks and dilettantes. If anything, the "blogger years" have shown the commercial press has often sold out and that so-called amateurs have more of a commitment to accuracy and balance than the "professionals". What they sometimes lack in polish they make up for in commitment to telling the truth.
In this regard I see blogging as a good thing.
I think you're absolutely right about the trend in news shifting towards immediacy vs. verification of content. Maybe professional journalism has a marketing problem, in that regard? I think the general public, especially in the "Internet age" where everything seems to be available at the click of a mouse, might need reminders of the value of fact-checked, accurate news reporting?
Really, there's no true need to be first, if doing so means only having part of the story, or an inaccurate one. The *perceived* need to do so only comes from the content consuming public who is trained to make the assumption that whatever news they get is already properly verified as accurate. There's a perception out there that, "If it comes from a name-brand news source, it's good content. So whichever of those professional source gives it to me first, consistently, must be the best at doing it."
I don't think most of us are anxious to see another negative ad campaign attacking the competition for doing things wrong .... but emphasis on a news team going the extra mile every time to ensure you get complete and verified news reporting, "even if it takes us a little longer" might help change peoples' priorities?
In the Unverified Digital World, Are Journalists and Bloggers Equal?
Under the law, they should be. They are citizens. There should be no special rights extended to anyone based on their profession.
--fatboy
Are journalists and marketing directors equal? Are journalists and advertisers equal? After all, they all produce digital copy to inform the public. OTOH, if there is something that separates journalists from these other information producing groups, then there is probably something that also separates them from your run of the mill bloggers.
As to what that something may be, I will leave to others to determine.
You see nakedcapitalism.com as better than NPR? Is that serious?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Groklaw had the best journalistic coverage in the world of the SCO v. IBM case, but it's "just" a blog. There's no fine line where a blog stops being "what I feel" and reports hard news. Take MSNBC, it's 85% commentary, yet still considered news, and their standards, such as using facts and verifying things, aren't that high.
In the Unverified Digital World, Are Journalists and Bloggers Equal?
Well, I think we have a document on that subject around here somewhere... oh yea, here it is:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Enough said.
Ultimately, we the readers are the product that both bloggers and journalists sell to their advertisers so in that respect, they are equal.
... bloggers can make up stories just as expertly as can "professional" journalists.
The fact that CNN would just pass along crazy suggestions from Twitter makes me LESS impressed with them, not more.
Bloggers at least have a self-imposed filter for reasonableness.
journalists are slowly sinking to the level of bloggers because being a journalist doesn't really pay anymore.
There's nothing slow about it, and they have already way shot past the level of blogger. I would believe most bloggers over most mainstream journalists today, because I know that the journalists are, as I said, under pressure to run a story as soon as possible, and often play fast and loose with facts in a way bloggers cannot and still maintain readers.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You see Hitler as better than Stalin? Is that serious?
It is hardly relevant what is on top of the other when you are scraping at the bottom of the barrel.
Understanding my views are only my own says so on most sites. Unlike Faux news My post are understood to be only my opinion.
I frankly feel insulted when these new readers and lousy reporters call themselves "journalists." Bloggers don't know better so I don't hold it against them. One should be required to have a degree to earn the title Journalist. Just as a garbage handler should not be allowed to degrade Engineers by calling themselves sanitation engineers.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
If journalist were giving the "analyst programmer" type of info and news I would agree. But at the moment frankly it feels they are giving you the junior first level tech level support (to continue your analogy). In fact when it comes to technical knowledge , blogger give you are far higher quality technical knowledge that the regurgitated newspaper and tv news.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
There used to be real journalism done by real journalists, but thanks to everyone wanting everything on the cheap and mostly due to a huge sell-out by the media who jumped on the "advertisement will pay for everything" bandwaggon long before the Internet did, that is rapidly going the way of the Dodo bird.
The problem is that selling out to advertisement means quality doesn't matter anymore, eyeballs do. A carefully researched, well-balanced article usually doesn't draw as many eyes as some bullshit attention whoring. "EVIL DANGER! YOU WILL DIE!" headlines used to be the domain of the tabloid press...
Since advertisement payment follows the same path everywhere you look - down after an initial hype - most media simply doesn't have the money to pay quality journalists anymore.
So there used to be a difference, but it's going away, all because you get what you pay for, and when you pay the minimum amount possible, you get the minimum acceptable quality in return.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Considering the abysmal lack of fact-checking on even the simplest of stories, the amount of content that is obviously just pandered from one web site to the next by so-called professional journalists, the number of images and stories that have been discovered to be (if not completely manufactured) at least heavily edited in favor of a political viewpoint...well, if people are having a hard time distinguishing "journalists" from "dipshit with a website and a viewpoint", I'd say journalists have only themselves to blame?
-Styopa
Most journalist on the mainstream media no longer cite 1 let a long 2 verified sources. They give their opinion or read what is written for them - at least a blogger writes their own.