2005.02.15
Watching the Watchmen
The Blog Herald is following the Old Media (some would say mainstream media) attempts to discredit and probably censure bloggers, blogging, and essentially free speech. It’s a longish article but interesting. It seems that what I call the traditional media are fairly upset because bloggers have expose lies, false reporting, and other unethical behaviors and/or weaknesses in their reporters, editors and content. Traditional media is accusing bloggers of being “the mob” while forgetting that we are all individuals with our own opinions and our own knowledge of fact. We like to correct the media when they get facts wrong or act unethical. What’s wrong with that? We are no more a mob than all the presses covering exactly the same news story and parroting each other about it. Blah blah blah.
I get the feeling that this is a sort of “Who Watches the Watchmen?” sort of issue. One of the purposes of the traditional media in America is to watch the government and to report on its dealings to the people. However, the people have always known that the traditional media filters what it reports through a lense (it can’t be helped; we are human). When the filters go our way it is “excellent journalism” and when not it is “blatant bias”. Yet, regardless, traditional media thinks it reports the facts with integrity and Truth and cannot do any wrong.
The problem is they have been taught in schools and popular culture that they are infallible. This is a mistake, of course, but they won’t admit it. Various bloggers, however, have pointed out mistakes. In some cases flagrant cover ups or lies. Individuals have always had this power but there was never such an easy way to distribute the correction of the traditional media. Previously it was a letter to the editor (the filter himself!). Now it’s the internet and it is unregulated. Traditional media can’t shut it up just as the government can’t shut up the presses.
So bloggers are doing to the traditional media what they are doing to the government: keeping them straight. I’m sure Nixon hated the fact that the media was hounding him and digging up things he felt best left undug. Still they exposed the corruption and wrong doing in the American government. The press did their job as they were supposed to. Now there is another layer of scrutiny and bloggers are doing the same to the old school media outlets. Bloggers and their free and easy distribution system that the layers above (traditional press and government) cannot control.
Who watches the Watchmen? We all do. It’s our right. Some would say our duty. Just like traditional media we are not infallible, but we do have our own system of making sure the crud is filtered even if we don’t have editors.
Bloggers go through direct peer review much like the scientific method. If a blogger points out some blatant error in the traditional media, other bloggers will pick it up. If a blogger is blowing steam or simply a liar, he’ll be greatly ignored. This itself isn’t a perfect system of checks and balances, but there isn’t one at any stage of life.
I think traditional media is having a knee jerk reaction to the new fact that they are being watched themselves. I’m sure the idea of “freedom of the press” was a bit scary to governments around the rest of the world when America ratified the Bill of Rights. Yet many countries now embrace this as a fundamental right in their political structure. I think that bloggers watching the Watchmen will eventually come to be accepted. It will just take some time.
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