Are bloggers journalists?
Written on July 8, 2005 – 5:28 pm | by soleh
Are bloggers journalists?
BY H. AMIR KHALID
YOU know what a blogger is by now, don’t you? This odd-sounding term – short for Web logger – refers to someone who publishes a diary on a website.
The diary could be as trivial as a daily list of the blogger’s pet cat’s comings and goings. (I promise, you will never read about my cat Bianca’s ever-so-cute habit of washing my face last thing at night. Oops, you just did. Sorry about that.)
Or it could be important; news and political bloggers in the United States claim that they broke the story of forged documents being used to support a CBS news story detailing George W. Bush’s lapses in fulfilling his National Guard service; the scandal is said to have made veteran news anchor Dan Rather retire a year early.
But are bloggers journalists?
Some journalists say no. Bloggers do not belong to a news organisation, they point out. A blogger is just one person; an organisation of hundreds is inevitably far superior in completeness of coverage.
Bloggers write about whatever strikes their fancy; journalists are constrained by the filters, as a Los Angeles Times columnist put it, of newsworthiness and objectivity.
A blogger’s output is not checked by other people before it sees “print” on the World Wide Web; bona fide news publications and broadcasters insist that editors and fact checkers go through a story first.
Now for the journalists who say yes. Bloggers are subject to the same libel laws as anyone else who opens his mouth, so to speak, in public.
Bloggers often suffer the same persecutions that journalists do, particularly in places such as Iran, where they are often jailed for speaking freely. And if there is no money to be won by litigation from a blogger, a plaintiff can still sue, to make him shut up and/or bankrupt him as a punishment.
I say the question is not whether bloggers are journalists. Journalists are not a professional class apart from the general public, in the same sense as doctors or engineers. A media organisation can hire anyone to be a journalist, and any freelancer can decide on his own to be one.
Journalists have no more right to free speech than anyone else. When a government agency or a company or a movie star gives journalists special access, it is a courtesy and not a right. Where there are official-secrets laws or unspoken restrictions on what can be reported or discussed, journalists are bound by them like everyone else.
Anyone who stands up in public to report facts or state an opinion, whatever they call themselves, must trade honestly in the marketplace of ideas. They must get their facts right, they must form their opinions scrupulously. Then it’s up to the public to decide whether a blogger is worth the attention he or she claims, the same as with the “mainstream” news media.
Remember, the mainstream media built its own reputation from scratch. In the beginning, centuries ago, the media wasn’t particularly interested in newsworthiness or objectivity. There was no “news” as we now know it to be worthy of, no mainstream to agree on what was newsworthy.
Commentators were as partial, and sometimes as libellous or inflammatory, as they pleased. At one time this was called “yellow journalism,” because the cheaper (and lesser) newspapers couldn’t afford bleached white paper to print on.
Newspapers of those early days were essentially at the same stage of development as blogs are today. They too were small and immature, and have had to grow up to be taken seriously.
Even today the mainstream media (the MSM, as blogs refer to them) are not above covering trivia as though it were important, while missing the truth, misunderstanding it or even misrepresenting it. (I could give examples, but I’m not in the mood to start a fight.)
Until very recently, freedom of the press was only for those who had a press – then, and now, a greatly expensive piece of equipment. But thanks to the Internet, now anyone can have the equivalent of a press. There goes the neighbourhood, some journalists mutter.
The quality of blogs is wildly uneven, true, but it remains true of the mainstream media as well. In both, you can find excellent material on public affairs, technology, the arts, and other serious topics; a great deal of inconsequential rubbish; and plenty in between. I suspect that the latter two might be more prevalent in amateur blogs than in the professional media.
But I also know that plenty of bloggers are passionate enough to be honing their knowledge of their topic, their sense of what matters to their audience, and their ability to express themselves, as they go along. And that’s the value of the blogosphere, as the blogging community calls itself.
More people who watch and think carefully and then express their opinions can only be a good thing in any society. And a point of view from outside the mainstream is to be valued; it can help us see and understand things we may miss otherwise.
© 1995-2005 Star Publications (Malaysia) Bhd (Co No 10894-D)
source : The Star
