Monday, February 14, 2005

The NY Times recently published an article about the the 'power' of bloggers, this time noting conservative bloggers had brought down Eason
Jordan
at CNN. Earlier this month, liberal bloggers went after fake
Jeff Gannon, Fake Reporter (tm)
, who was working for a conservative publication, and who seemingly had unrestricted access to the White House press corps. Before that, there were the bloggers who went after Dan Rather. The whole thing makes me a
little nervous, because it feels a little like "Oh yeah, you take one of ours down? We're going to take one of yours." I think it's fair to say *most* people think there's a bias in the media; I don't buy into the notion that it's entirely a liberal bias (the conservatives, for instance, rule the radio waves), but I do agree some people may think there is a liberal bias.

I think it's worthwhile for people to question the media, to point out facts. I will say some bias is unintentional, a lot of it coming down to deadlines and not being able to get both sides of the story for whatever reason (it reminds me of the time I wrote a feature on swimming lessons and interviewed only the instructors but forgot to talk to the kids and their parents). At the same time, I'm wondering whether there's a taste for blood and power now in the blogosphere and as a result, are we going to lose reporters on either side of the aisle? Are bloggers sitting at their
keyboards and sticking their tongues out at journalists like me* and say, "Ha, ha, we're watching you, and never mind we have no idea how you do your job or the pressures you're under or the fact when something is 'off the record', it is *off the record*."

I honestly don't care about whether it's conservative or liberal bloggers going after the media; what I take issue with are bloggers, who can say anything they want and
aren't bound by a code of ethics or style or even a journalistic organization, have elected themselves as the media watchdog.

Link: Another article on jobs and blogging.

* Former journalist

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