Authority. Old media had it but is new media getting it?
by stefwill on Sep.01, 2008, under Random Thoughts
Thanks to the MWF, The 7:30 Report and Radio National, I’ve heard and seen a lot about Bloggers, Citizen Journalism and “New Media” journalism in the last week. All of the discussion seems to point to a decline in the quality and authority of traditional journalism and a consequent rise for Bloggers, although the kinds of websites that are producing quality reporting can hardly be called blogs any longer.
Show us yer Nogs!
Nogs, an abbreviation of News Blogs … No I really don’t think that will catch on.
We need to define a new language to talk about this emerging form of media. If traditional blogs are akin to the old pamphlets that were circulated after the printing press was developed, that would make News Blogs more like the first newspapers – reactionary in some cases and toadying in others.
When the US Constitution guaranteed “Freedom of the Press” it wasn’t talking about the big newspapers, it was aimed at those tatty and often downright wrong pamphlets and Broadsides. They were printed by the radical fringe (on both sides of the political divide) but also by concerned citizens with something to say – they where the bloggers of their day.
One of the most important things for a blogger is authority, or so they say. So in a world where “old media” journalists are loosing their authority, we have to ask “where does authority come from?” How do we decide that Baghdad Blogger has the real poop but Al Jazeera doesn’t? (That said even Salam Pax has an occasional column in the Guardian.)
So do we turn to the plethora of Blog Rating websites, judge by the number and quality of a blog’s posts and comments or perhaps the recommendations of our social networks?
All of these options have their flaws. Rating sites can’t all be accurate. A blogger and their audience may be articulate but delusional. Our social networks can be a good bet although they can limit our field of view – in that we tend to like the same things – so exposure to new ideas could be less frequent.
How do you decide that a blog has authority?
How do you decide who is telling the “truth”?
How much do you trust what you read in blogs?
For me it’s about comparison, about reading widely and not sticking to one source. If I read a post that piques my interest I’ll go searching for more info, I’ll try and read the same story from as many points of view as I can. Only then can I decide what I believe is true.
