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« Memogate: CBS Trashes Staudt | Main | Memogate: Dan, Rather Arrogant » September 18, 2004Memogate Fallout: More Scrutiny Of Bloggers. (Bring it on!)A few days ago, before the CBS memos were proven beyond doubt to be forgeries, I was watching one of the cable news shows - I think it was Scarborough Country on MSNBC, but I'm not sure - and a Chicago Tribune editor named Jim Warren (I think) was commenting that the growing impact of blogs and bloggers on mainstream journalism means that the bloggers themselves should be scrutinized. He meant it. The Trib has published this article about some of the bloggers who lead the charge against the CBS forgeries... The writer reuses the same tired complaint of Big Journalism about bloggers - that it lacks editors and fact-checkers - showing again that Big Journalism is generally ignorant of how the blogosphere actually works. Many leading newspaper editors and TV directors are generally disdainful of bloggers, who assume the mantle of the free press but operate outside of traditional journalistic rules that aspire to fairness, balance and rigorous editing and fact-checking.What Big Media fails to grasp is that bloggers are routinely fact-checked by other blogs - and with the same speed and depth as the blogosphere fact-checked the CBS report and exposed its every flaw. As for fairness and balance, blogs don't claim to be unbiased. In fact, most well-read blogs disclose the biases of the bloggers who write them, and even go further and provide readers with detailed resumes of the writers. Think about this for a few minutes: All you know about the writer of the Trib piece that I'm blogging about is that the writer's name is Howard Witt. You don't know a thing about him. You don't know if he's a rookie reporter straight out of J-school, or a veteran. You don't know if he's conservative or liberal. You don't know if he has any specific expertise outside of journalism. You know his name. Now, scroll up and see the "About Me" button. If you click it, you'll see a lot of information about me, ranging from where I grew up to what I do for a living to facts about my education and career and about my family. And my bias - I'm a conservative - is not hidden. You can filter my words through that knowledge about me and judge whether I'm serving up facts or spin. In the memogate scandal, the forged memos were found to be credible by Dan Rather, whose only expertise is teevee journalism, but exposed as frauds by bloggers who either had specific expertise in typography and fonts and such, or were able to track down experts. And where the bloggers didn't have expertise, they often found it via comments from readers - or from other bloggers. And if they got something wrong, readers and other bloggers corrected the error. As for fact-checking, I haven't checked the MSNBC website or use Google to get a transcript of the show that I saw that Trib editor on and to post his quote here. I could do that, but I decided to work from memory. So, if I got his name wrong or misrepresented what he said, any one of my readers can correct me in the comments section, and provide a link to the transcript to prove me wrong. That's how the blogosphere works. It fact-checks Big Journalism - and it fact-checks itself. That's why the blogosphere is a quantum leap forward in both the accuracy and the analytical depth of journalism and, therefore, in the practice of journalism itself. Posted in Journalism & Media
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Facts-checked: Dan Rather has experience as a print journalist for a few years - back in the 1950s. See, :-) Posted by: Ernest Miller at September 18, 2004 06:22 PM"What Big Media fails to grasp is that bloggers are routinely fact-checked by other blogs" One of the advantages that blogs also have is that they often directly link to their evidence and/or sources (via Hyperlinks), which in some cases includes primary sources. This is something that most of the MSM either doesn't do or doesn't readily have available (or they do and don't seem to use it) Posted by: jaws at September 18, 2004 06:47 PMHi Ernest. Good catch. Tell Hylton I said hello. Posted by: Bill Hobbs at September 18, 2004 11:34 PMAny of you bloggers hunt elk? After you've shot a bull elk, and he's lying there effectively dead, do not get too close too fast. He may thrash, hook you with his anlers or kick you with very sharp hooves. The main stream media is lying there with a bullet through it. It's not safe to get too close. The MSM has plenty of thrash left in it. Even so, the MSM as presently set up is deader than an elk with a .30-06 through its heart. Posted by: Fred Z at September 19, 2004 02:02 PMBlogs not supposed to be biased? I don't remember reading that standard/law/creed anywhere. A blog can be as biased as it likes. When a blog is not factual then the other bloggers play a role in helping people measure its credibility (understatement of the day)... but there's nothing wrong with pointing out when your opponents stumble. Post a comment
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