Are We Bloggers Journalists? Huge Question

It is indeed a loaded question in a world where technology and easy access to it has transformed the role of journalism and how it is practiced.

Can I be considered a journalist because I do have access to the necessary technology and information to express my ideas and convictions through a medium, the Internet, which has worldwide reach?

If we ask that question to a Chinese blogger raising hell about how the Communist regime represses free press and democracy in that country, the answer would be a resounding yes. But what if the blogger operates in a democratic country with a free press that has historically assumed the role of watchdog of democracy? Can anyone with a computer, a modem and an opinion be considered a journalist?

Ann Cooper (WPFC photo)

This is the dichotomy that Ann Cooper, former executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, presents in this article published by the Columbia Journalism Review.

Cooper pays special attention to the rivalry, sometime heated and passionate, that the explosive irruption of blogging has triggered in the United States in the last 10 years. Many bloggers contend that traditional journalism is "calcified, too self-important to correct its errors or own up to its biases, too pompous to talk with its audience, rather than at it.”

On the other hand, many traditional journalists agreed with the notion that bloggers are "acerbic ego-trippers, publishers of opinion and unconfirmed gossip with no professional standards. They stole the hard work of mainstream reporters and rarely picked up a telephone to do their own research. Some said bloggers threatened the established order of American journalism, and maybe even American democracy."

Bloggers, encouraged by their growing influence in the public debate, demand a place at the table; whereas recognized journalists, perhaps threatened by this competition, demand professionalism and ethical standards from bloggers before they can sit at the same table. But some believe this tug of war has already been rendered obsolete by today's realities.

Cooper quotes Washington lawyer Scott Gant's book "The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age," as follows:

Freedom of the press now belongs not just to those who own printing presses, but also to those who use cell phones, video cameras, blogging software, and other technology to deliver news and views to the world — just like those early Internet writers in China.

Cooper acknowledges that this controversy is very fluid and uses three markers to illustrate this fluidity.

First, access, or the lack thereof. Who gets a press pass and who does not, and why? Bloggers have encountered traditional barriers that have kept them from getting a seat at the table. But those "barriers are definitely crumbling,” says Cooper.

Bloggers were admitted to the 2004 and 2008 political party conventions. They had reserved seating in a spillover room at the January 2007 trial of former White House aide Scooter Libby. Doors have cracked open at the United Nations, the White House, and the congressional press galleries, which have all accredited online-only journalists. So have legislatures in California, Tennessee, and Georgia, according to Michelle Blackston, a spokeswoman for the National Conference of State Legislatures. Blackston's group counsels an inclusive press policy—urging lawmakers to leak good stories to bloggers, and to start their own blogs. “We feel strongly it’s a new way for lawmakers to connect with their constituents,” she says.*

Second, legal protections for journalists. American traditional journalists have been at the forefront of the fight for special considerations to do their jobs. And right now one of those fights is taking place in Congress, where they are pushing for a bill that would extend a journalist's right to keep his or her sources confidential.

But according to Cooper, bloggers are much more concerned with their own opinions than with protecting what other may say.

In fact, blog writers face a very different set of legal risks from those addressed in the shield law. Bloggers, says Robert Cox, an online writer and president of the Media Bloggers Association, “are going to be intentionally provocative. They rely on hyperbole, sometimes.” Cox says that several hundred lawsuits have been filed against bloggers, most charging defamation, copyright violation, or invasion of privacy.

But even so, there is the subject of professionalism and therefore credibility.

“There are some simple things bloggers can do” without compromising their passionate voices, says Cox, “but they don’t know to do them.” Something as basic, for example, as using the disclaimer “alleged” when writing about a person accused but not convicted of a crime. “The more professional you are, the better your standards, the more defensible your position,” says Cox.

Third, is there a real divide between traditional journalism and blogging? There was, but nowadays it is becoming harder and harder to distinguish the differences, says Cooper.

In 2008, with old media in a financial crisis that seems to deepen by the week, resistance is evaporating. Traditional reporters and online writers are increasingly converging under one shared journalistic tent, where each side is free to borrow from the other. Thus, mainstream reporters still write news and analysis that strive for impartiality, but increasingly they also blog (at midsummer, nytimes.com had sixty-one news and opinion blogs; there were eighty-one at washingtonpost.com). Bloggers still aggregate and riff off the news reported in mainstream media, but a few are beginning to draw readers with original reporting.*

And fourth, the concerns about bloggers' journalistic standards. Cooper quotes former NBC News reporter David Hazinski on the matter of TV news outlets relying on regular citizens armed with their camcorders as saying that calling them "citizen reporters" "is like saying someone who carries a scalpel is a ‘citizen surgeon’ or someone who can read a law book is a ‘citizen lawyer'." And he adds, "Information without journalistic standards is called gossip.”

Cooper comments that Hazink, now a professor at the University of Georgia, got a hail of very strong criticism from the blogosphere, including, incredibly, “death threats.” Who would have thought the blogger-journalist controversy could trigger as much passion as, say, European football?

In any instance, it is clear that one of the quintessential characteristics of blogging is the sense of organized chaos where this new medium thrives. Even so, most agree that there should be some kind of organization in the way bloggers conduct their business. The rules of the market of ideas seem to be one alternative.

When I asked Eric Umansky, a senior writer at the investigative journalism project ProPublica (and a CJR contributing editor) and a veteran of both old and new media, how standards of online journalism will be enforced, his answer was one that’s repeated often in cyberspace: “It’s going to be regulated essentially by the marketplace.” That means a blog, just like a newspaper, has to build credibility; people will stop reading if it’s “unreliable and unlikely to tell me anything new,” he said.

I hope I have.

Comments

[Taran Rampersad]

We're published, but not necessarily journalists. If you look at a newspaper, you'll find articles and editorials.

Editorials are not necessarily journalism. And blogs are typically... editorials.