The Darker Side of Blog Journalism and the Danger of Romanticizing It

Blogs' presenting an alternative to mainstream journalism has made people more aware than ever of the limitations that journalism has, especially its reliance on keeping profit to satisfy owners and shareholders, potentially at the cost of journalism; its potential to be out of touch with the concerns of everyday people; its alleged biases, especially liberal; ant its access being closed to all but a highly educated and trained elite. Unfortunately, blogs also have their limitations, which some people gloss over in seeing them as ideal.

Blogs can update almost constantly, and deliver news more quickly than print media outlets and some television stations, but this comes at a cost. Some bloggers may choose to only do breaking news, and in the constant pressure to be first, may turn their back on analyzing the news or trying to delve deeper into issues. This results in their coverage often being uninformed or misinformed, similar to television news trying to determine how many planes were hijacked on September 11, 2001, how many people died, and where the attack came from. While people rightly want to know about events like September 11 as soon as possible, inaccurate journalism does them no good.

The other major problem that bloggers face is going against much of the professionalism that the news media are supposed to practice. While many bloggers, lacking journalistic training, are unaware of ethical issues, others scorn them out of a belief that they know how to report news better than the mainstream media, and that its way is inevitably wrong. Such blogs tend to be full of the stories that they think the media should report on more, often with less regard for how newsworthy they would be if an objective standpoint existed. For example, a right-wing blog that sees society as hostile to religion might play up a story over students being chastized by their teachers for praying in class, hoping to stir public outrage over the story rather than make the viewers aware about the issue and inform them to help them develop their opinions. Such bloggers may defend their biased reporting by arguing that there is no such thing as objectivity and the mainstream media are trying to artificially balance the sides to favor the weaker opposing side, or that the mainstream media are biased in the opposite direction. Both arguments miss the point that the bloggers set out with a goal in mind, and did not give a serious effort to consider both sides.

Rather than portray view blogging as an individualistic cure to the mainstream media forcing journalists to produce stories in line with their preferences or as a means of giving untrained people in their pajamas equal footing with people who have spent decades in the industry, people should see them both as journalists working under different frameworks. While bloggers have fewer restrictions than mainstream journalists, their responsibilities are the same, as is the human potential to skew the news according to one's own biases. Objectivity may be unattainable, but bloggers can and should make a good faith effort, and must do so if they hope to surpass mainstream journalism.