Blogging vs Journalism

The Information age has brought with it both advantages and disadvantages. Many critics believe that the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages in terms of the stress created by the sheer volume of information, much of which cannot be verified. However, there are also marked advantages for the world and time in which we live today. One phenomenon that is for example changing the face of journalism is known as citizen journalism in the form of online media outlets.

Increasingly, both professionals and amateurs in any field can use the Internet as an outlet for their products and ideas. This has resulted in a remarkable change in journalism, which spurred the debate over whether blogging can truly be seen on the same level as professional journalism. Even the debate is changing, as it is becoming clear that the Internet is increasingly integrated in all areas of life. Instead of debating the merits of journalism vs. blogging, researchers are now considering the integration between the two forms of news outlet, and their influence upon each other. This is a good thing, according to writers such as Jay Rosen.

One important factor that Rosen points out is that online journalism in the form of blogging, which is open to all citizens and all professionals, is also free from the ethical obligations of traditional journalism. This means that the traditional press was often subject to manipulation by powerful interest parties, which by definition made reporting inaccurate. Hence citizens were beginning to substantially lose their trust in the press. According to Rosen, this trust is to be reestablished by citizen journalism, not least because it is a much more interactive phenomenon than the traditional press. Online journalists can build their reputation by means of networking with their colleagues and their readership. As such, the value as well as validity of blogging is established by its readership. Most importantly, this also influences the way in which traditional journalism will operate in the future if it is to remain competitive.

Blogs Got Hits and CBS Got a Black Eye!

Social networking’s many communications platforms are combining to create a new egalitarianism in news coverage, analysis, interpretation and reporting. At issue in the first part of the article is the legitimacy of blogs and their value or not. Quickly dismissed by traditional media with a patronizing tone, bloggers today are much more read and trusted than many of the traditional media producers, writers and newscasters are. To argue that there is not a vetting process for blogs and blogging is to miss the point. The issue is one of trust and transparency. Bloggers have no inherent financial gain for slanting the news, make their partisanship clear, and are aggressive about finding the essence, the truth of a story. Simply put, bloggers are more trusted, therefore more read, than traditional media in its many forms. Memogate, referred in the article, is clear proof that media luminaries including Dan Rather have no conviction about presenting as fact sources that have never been vetted. The irony of traditional media attacking bloggers yet one of their own allowing unvetted material to make it to 60 Minutes, potentially doing irreparable harm to a person’s livelihood, regardless of the victim’s political affiliation, makes blogging’s unvetted masses emerge all the more trustworthy. Memogate may have paradoxically propelled President George W. Bush to the White House as millions of Americans were enraged by the lack of ethics, and this clear violation of the public trust fueled his supporters with a renewed zeal.

The second segments of the article discuss access of the press to then Vice President Dick Cheney and the ability of traditional media to constrict dissenting voices. Clearly the ethics of restricting the New Your Times from enough access to the Administration, despite this papers’ renowned anti-Republican stance, is unethical. In keeping with the precepts of the Constitution and the ethics of democracy as defined as ideals by the United States, limiting access of dissenting voices just drives up the distrust of the public and the media. All of this tends to make entire branches of the government more insular, and in so doing they become less likely to concentrate on their service to other departments and citizens. It is unethical to limit access of dissenting voices from government-funded jets just for the comfort or convenience of the politician. Authenticity, transparency and trust are supposed to make the life of a politician, certainly a Vice President, continuously accountable. The Vice President is there to serve the people, not for the press and people to serve them. By in effect denying access, even if personally uncomfortable and even with traditional media they may not agree with, the Vice President is denying democracy what it needs to move forward. Truth and transparency and the fuel of democracy, to deny that through being highly selective about access is to limit its potential to keep a country’s politicians focused on serving rather than using their positions to serve themselves.