Bloggers are making it to the Beltway forefront thanks to the Media Bloggers Association [LINK] and the Scooter Libby trial.
… for the first time in a federal court, two of these seats will be reserved for bloggers. After two years of negotiations with judicial officials across the country, the Media Bloggers Association, a nonpartisan group with about 1,000 members working to extend the powers of the press to bloggers, has won credentials to rotate among his members.
Naturally, the questions of blogger credibility and journalistic integrity make their appearances. Do you believe everything you read in the paper or hear on TV? Why would you treat the internet news medium any differently?
The debates over the traditional checks-and-balances process that journalists follow are continuing, and some bloggers are resisting efforts to be put under the umbrella of the traditional news media.
By now, bloggers and traditional journalists should know that honesty in reporting only goes as far as the writer in question, and is not a function of the medium. The question comes back to the philosophy of each reporter, whether for a newspaper or for a blog.
Here comes the troublesome part.
[Robert] Cox also envisions fostering an elite tier of bloggers and has been in talks with Harvard Law School about online courses associated with its Berkman Center for Internet & Society … By accepting the association’s ethical standards and adopting an official policy for making corrections, members of this group would be credentialed by the association, which in turn would win them access to news and sporting events, advance copies of new books for review and entrance to advance screening of movies.
Once again, a democratic medium is placed on a conveyor belt for a seal of approval. In my opinion, stamping and authorizing bloggers, and then rewarding the graduates with access, defeats the purpose of the blog medium, which is variety and quantity in reporting. If Cox’s is the accepted norm, we’d might as well go back to reading the paper and watching the news on TV.
Tim at Progressive On The Prairie shares my worry over blogger knighthood.
First much of this happens already without the MBA or any other organization being a credentialing entity. Bloggers attended and covered the national political conventions two years ago. I guarantee bloggers get plenty of press releases and invitations to events from various campaigns and organizations, just like the traditional media.
… Second and perhaps more important, I look askance at any effort to proclaim one segment of a group of similarly situated individuals as the elite, who are thereby entitled to advantages over the others. Designating an elite tier of bloggers strikes me as particularly contrary to one of the best things about blogs ” they allow almost anyone a low-cost means of distributing ideas, analysis and criticism worldwide. As such, blogs can help undercut the sad but all too true observation of journalist A.J. Liebling: Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.
The self-proclaimed blogger elite, such as BoingBoing and Atrios, often makes sweeping and uneducated statements that propagate through the blogosphere as gospel, simply because these blogs are ranked in the Top 10, i.e. they are the cool kids. Popularity is not equal to credibility, but too many times have we seen popular opinion shaped by that which is anointed as “official.”
The New Orleans bloggers are a breed apart, especially when the survival of our city is at stake. Here is where we can step in to make a difference not just for New Orleans but for OpenSource technology and, as Alan Gutierrez and I call it, OpenSource Civic Reporting and Research. We own the material, we gain and grant each other access, we tell the story because it requires telling and we act based on need. Let’s not squander this opportunity to make a difference in journalism, one of the last civilized acts of humanity.
Isn’t this stratification and sort of de-democratization of the medium inevitable as our stratified society catches up to the new technology?
I mean.. we live in an elitist society. Wouldn’t the media of such a society.. as new media forms become more familiar.. naturally assume the trappings of that society?
I suspect that we can always expect social conditions to shape media rather than the other way around.
Well said. Boing Boing, while I like some of the “wonderful things” posts of theirs, really annoys me when they attempt to take a stand on some sociopolitical issue or other. Their politics are crude and naive at best, and they come off simply as “the cool kids” trying to appear knowledgeable about some matter of import. If folks like them end up becoming some official elite tier of blogging, God help us.
The whole notion of a separate governance standard for bloggers is absurd, as is the notion that Journalism 1.0 is broken and needs to be replaced by Journalism 2.0. If a blogger wants to do journalism on their blog — rather than, say, marketing or recipe collecting or publishing a daily fictional soap opera or exaggerating their wealth and beauty in order to get laid — they can choose from among any number of pre-existing codes of conduct for journalists and try to stick to that. It is not rocket science. Say what you know, and how you know it. Don’t say that you know what you don’t know. If you publish something that you later discover was wrong, publish a note saying you were wrong. That’s about it.
I have been made aware that Robert Cox is planning to arrange a seat at the Libby trial for one of his bloggers – a Lance Dutson of
http://mainewebreport.com
I have been following Mr Dutson’s blog for some time, and have come to find that most of his accusations appear to be brazenly untrue – untruths about which he has repeatedly been made aware. He has even admitted to knowing this a few times, but these admissions eventually disappear… and off he goes again, on another rant.
Robert Cox informs me and others that he has never even read Dutson’s blog. I find this, if true, to be an act of extreme negligience.
If you do read Dutson’s blog, you will see that the headlines are never corroborated by fact, but rather, the links point only to more of his own accusations, or even to documents which actually CONTRADICT his accusations.
Apparently, people only read the headlines. And they believe them.
He appears to get the most gratification out of making searingly vicious personal attacks on total strangers whom he somehow perceives as being enemies.
He behaves like a web troll, and nothing else but. I find it very difficult to believe that anyone would assign a seat at the Libby trial, and its resultant journalistic credibility, to someone without ever having checked his credentials.
Web trolls should be eliminated – not elevated.
This is why Cox should not be made head of a Blogger Credentialing Consortium that grants only some, like Dutson, access. This is the danger of media elitism, and can be avoided with as many journalists, including bloggers and traditional reporters, on the story as possible.
How true.
Perhaps money is tight for Cox’s dot-org, and Lance Dutson of “Maine Coast Design” has seen a way to feed his needs by volunteering his services to Cox.
http://www.mediabloggers.org/—-bottom of page.
Apparently Mr Dutson lost his few other clients after having posted a phony “Press release” on the website of his last client – The Camden/Lincolnville/Rockland Chamber of Commerce. This article blasted the MOT for intentionally manipulating Google Adwords, and spawned some serious amazement from everyone involved.
He was accidentally catapulted into fame when the MOT’s ad agency ignored all caveats from MOT officials, and filed a lawsuit.
The rest is history – or in his case – it’s a fractured fairy tale.
Last month I posted a comment about the Libby Trial as “Sanity seeker”. Robert Cox had appointed his “Cause Celèbre” -Lance Dutson – as a Libby “journalist”. Dutson has made his reputation by telling untruths, and has completely destroyed the lives of several very good, very innocent people.
Cox has made his reputation off of Dutson.
I was at first a bit disinformed about the timeline on what Cox had read, and I wish to make a correction.
I’m old fashioned, and think that the truth is still very important. It’s a travesty that Lance Dutson should have been allowed into Washington in any capacity.
I would like very much to post a link to the first (rough draft) chapter of my book:
http://truthaboutlewis.blogspot.com/
I have 2 actual emails from Cox which prove my claims that Cox had only “Skimmed” Dutson’s blog since May of 2006. Most of the most vicious and inaccurate personal attacks occurred since then.
Thank you very much for your time.
—Linda Hutchins
(LOL – now I have 4 or 5…
http://coxstuff.blogspot.com)