The treatment of bloggers as irksome and insignificant is not news. Any time there is something new under the sun, backlash immediately follows. We see attempts to discredit or dismiss that new thing in order to preserve the old. I’m not sure that we’ll ever see that inclination change, but I feel the need to jump into this discussion regarding who is allowed to be respected as an information provider.
A-List Bloggers Club
A friend alerted me to some discussion going on about who qualifies as a blogger. The post ends with the line:
Next time, ask a woman who actually blogs, okay?
Not bad, except that there are blogging women on the panel. Jennifer Pozner is one who posts regularly. I wouldn’t pay much attention to the rudeness of this since most of the sites listed on the blogroll seem like they were hand-selected for popularity, saying something right there about who is permitted into the Real Bloggers Club. That there is invisibility and a hierarchy in the blogosphere is a little unnerving. I’ve heard variations on this theme before. So-and-so isn’t a real blogger because he/she (circle one or more): writes about her cat, isn’t endorsed by a major organization, hasn’t gotten props from the mainstream media, posts irregularly, uses a pseudonym, writes in an un-hip style, has a small readership, ignores politics, only writes about politics, doesn’t allow comments, gets few comments, uses a crappy template, only permits friends to read posts, etc.
Being critical is one thing, but completely disregarding another blogger because they don’t fit a very narrow definition is something else.
Journalists Fearing Their Own Irrelevancy
Through the grapevine I heard of one remark made by a local corporate newsmonger that was dismissive of the Hartford IMC being at a particular press conference. HIMC reporters were ignorantly categorized as “blogger”s–not a title we reject, but we’ve had a weekly public affairs program for over two years, published a monthly newspaper for almost 5 years, and recently put out a quarterly journal which is available in high traffic areas, like Tisane and JoJo’s. We’ve been blogging for under a year as an organization. It’s something that I think we do well. A few volunteers are only involved in the blog. Others treat the print or radio work we do as more important.
It’s kind of funny that Hartford IMC is still an underground-ish entity, since we’re fast becoming the ONLY broadcast media in Hartford. WFSB moved out a few weeks ago. I believe that Fox 61 located on Church Street is the only broadcast news left here, besides public access.
The Hartford Independent Media Center is a media activist organization. I think the stereotype of Indymedia and alternative media is that it’s made up of young, uneducated, dirty rabblerousers who are living off of trust funds. No doubt some people fit that bill, but around these parts, the only volunteer who might be considered unemployed is a stay-at-home-dad. Everyone else works outside the home–full-time or damn near to it–and many have other responsibilities like spouses and offspring. Several of us have degrees in history, political science, composition & rhetoric, sociology, and journalism. The work we do for the Hartford IMC is not in exchange for a paycheck.
I mention all of that because I think there is a connection to the larger picture. Surely, this has not been the only time alternative media outlets have been dissed by the corporate media. Maybe there is a fear for their job security? Indymedia reporters and many other alternative media folks do their reporting because they enjoy it or feel compelled to fill in the huge gaps left by a self-described objective mainstream media. They put long hours into editing audio/visual clips. Usually, they have to find a way to obtain such equipment in the first place, since the alternative media aren’t able to drop thousands of dollars on super high quality cameras. After a full day of work and family obligations, they make time to do at least something about providing society with more accurate news reporting.
Like it or not, the way things are now, the internet is democratic, just so long as you’ve got the means to access it. To have a blog, you don’t need to spend money. You can spend it if you want certain perks, but you don’t need to. If you’ve just recorded something, you can post it for anybody (or limited people) to see, using YouTube and other free services. There’s less reliance on the corporate news media to cover stories because we can do it ourselves. Usually, we can do it better with a much smaller budget.
I don’t get thousands of people reading this blog every day, but considering that I do not advertise this at all, the fact that I get a few dozen readers, only a handful whom I know, is pretty amazing. Alternative news media sites can get hundreds or thousands of visitors each day, depending on things like unique stories, hyper-localized news, and audio-visual footage that might be censored on regular television. Right now, the mainstream media outlets very well know that the internet is a threat to them. That’s why so many have put up e-editions, video clips, allow comments on articles, and even have some staff keep blogs. It’s not that the old media will totally vanish– it’s that every time they make poor editorial choices, there will be regular folks out in the world ready to cover stories that we think are important.
Reliable Sources
Of all the criticisms that bloggers and other alternative media people get, I think this one has the most potential for being a decent argument. I tell my students–it seems constantly–to be careful about what sources they use. Who is the author? Can the author be considered an expert in his/her field? If not an expert, has that person at least invested a lot of time and energy into research? What criticism of that author exists out there, and do you think that evaluation is worth listening to? If you don’t know anything about the author, what about the information? If it sounds too “out there,” why is that? Are there other sources out there saying something similar? When was this published? By whom?
Those are all good questions to ask about traditional as well as online sources.
About blogs, it is annoying when the author only uses a pseudonym, but given the nature of the internet, it’s pretty easy to find out something about his/her real life identity. Many bloggers post full names on secondary pages, reference employers, or have other blogs where their identities are exposed. Even those clinging to anonymity might be considered good sources of information if they cite where they’ve obtained their information. This can be linking to news articles or other blogs. It could be explaining that they know all about a crime because it happened in their neighborhood.
How is a blog any less credible than a newspaper?
Newspapers and news broadcasts:
- do not always identify sources/witnesses
- often incorrectly identify sources/witnesses
- edit audio-visual clips to completely change what a person is saying. Those 5-second soundbites you see? That’s often two different ideas/sentences spliced together. In the most egregious cases, the out-of-context soundbites are done intentionally, using material from two very distant pieces within an interview.
- do not necessarily make corrections obvious. Mistakes are always going to be made, but choosing to admit them in 4 point font, wedged between a lingerie ad and a fluff piece on something happening in Australia is probably not the best way to correct errors.
- often, readers/viewers aren’t readily provided with any of the reporters’/journalists’ credentials.
- are not objective, even if they claim to be. By deciding what to cover, what to ignore, the style of presentation, and even word choice (ex: “minority activists” vs. “activists” vs. “community”), they are agenda setting.
Last night there was a guest on the Colbert Report who seemed to think that all bloggers lacked credibility because of some rumor he’d heard about foreign governments and terrorist cells (or something bizarre like that) publishing propaganda on the internet. It was nice to hear Colbert’s audience unleash gasps and boo’s at a statement so clearly propagandistic in itself.