Big Business vs. Bloggers
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Written By Reprise Media | March 7, 2005 | Share This
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The problem with blogging is, put simply, one of decentralization. That web content can be published without the sponsorship of a publisher and hosted without the knowledge of an ISP presents serious concerns.
With traditional forms of journalism, the editor or publisher checks the writer’s credentials, the veracity of their sources, the content itself, and manages […]
The problem with blogging is, put simply, one of decentralization. That web content can be published without the sponsorship of a publisher and hosted without the knowledge of an ISP presents serious concerns.
With traditional forms of journalism, the editor or publisher checks the writer’s credentials, the veracity of their sources, the content itself, and manages the general spirit in which the stories are presented. That sponsorship is what creates accountability and protects not just the journalist but the audience as well. Typically, the reader doesn’t need to know or trust the writer, since the relationship is first and foremost with the publisher.
Bloggers are typically journalists without affiliation, without backing, and represent a new interpretation of free press our laws haven’t considered or addressed. Without any process of checks and balances, journalists are free to write what they want whether based on rumors, speculation and pure imagination.
While even the most trusted trades get it wrong from time to time (see: Jayson Blair/NY Times or CBS/Dan Rather), RSS technologies only exacerbate the problem as they give mass distribution to derivative content; first-hand and second-hand reports become one and the same, with falsehoods and misrepresentations being magnified with alarming speed.
Technology aside, this should become a highly politicized issue, one near and dear to the hearts of the current administration. Despite all reluctance to regulate the Internet, in terms of taxing or content, this issue does impact the Patriot Act to the extent that journalists have access to sensitive information, and we’d expect the administration to take an interest.
While the basic dilemma is fairly straight-forward, it does carry baggage. But the issue is not to say whether bloggers represent the people or the true populist spirit of the Internet, but whether bloggers should be granted protections as journalists. The answer seems as basic as the question, that yes they should be held to some standard of accountability. When journalists assume avatars and handles, when they don’t host their own content, when companies have to petition a syndication network like Blogger or the ISP itself just to track down the author in cases of libel or slander, the system no longer protects the people and gives free license to abuse the First Amendment in any number of ways.
We’re not legal scholars. we’re search marketers, so that’s what we’ll speak of. While the courts wrangle with the First Amendment issues of blogging (which could go on for years), we’d like to see the search engines take some responsibility. Not for the content itself, but for the classification of that content. If Yahoo can separate News listings from their standard web listings, the clarification of first-hand certified reports vs. secondary op-ed and summary presentations should be possible.
And as for how that classification would be plied, it seems fairly obvious that the sacred tradition of journalism might lend itself to a Verisign e-commerce-style certification system. And here’s the most important part, so the search engines don’t accept any undue responsibility (or further shape our perception): The engines should develop filters that leave the reader to evaluate the merits of which content they’ll consume.
Randy Schwartz is Director of Strategic Development at Reprise Media.
Topics: Blogging |