In case you haven’t heard, there’s quite a bit of buzz at the moment about the journalistic or otherwise role of bloggers these days. How independent should they be and what rules, if any, should they play by? Paul Jacobson recently addressed the issue in his blog, and I felt I should add my two cents, too.
Essentially, the problem is this: Blogging started a few years ago not as an alternative to traditional journalism, but as something completely different. But, a few years later, things have changed. Quite a bit. Originally, everything that a blogger wrote was treated as opinion, really, and so an obvious and inherent bias was expected and accepted. Now, however, the worlds of journalism and blogging are merging, such that blogs are becoming seen as simply an alternative medium for which ‘traditional’ journalists and journalism can operate through. And so people are beginning to expect objectivity and ‘traditional’ journalistic ethics to apply. I’m not sure this should really be the case…
There are 2 sorts of bloggers; journalists who are simply doing their work online, and those bloggers who are not trying to be journalists at all, but just happen to be talking about much of the same things. The first should, naturally, conform to the ethics that would apply if they were writing for any other medium, as this is essentially how it will be treated by readers. And that’s what’s really important. To force the latter category of bloggers to do the same, however, would be a shame. The idea of blogging encapsulates the notion of an individual writing their opinion on whatever they feel most strongly about; and there’s no way to eliminate bias from that, or reason to want to. It is this strong sense of opinion and interest that drives blogging, and makes some more interesting than others. But where do we draw the line?
I’m not for one second suggesting that this inherent bias should go unmeasured and unchecked. Quite the opposite. It is the task of the reader to determine for themselves whether they want to take what is said as information, opinion, or just plain bias, but this can sometimes be tricky. A recent video post by our favourite goateed friend, Walt Mossberg, drew most of its comment discussion from accusations that a so-called review of the new Palm Pre was really a praise-singing of the new iPhone, by someone who is in Apple’s back pocket. Not only does this bring into question the worth of the Pre’s review, but also his general credibility. That’s not a good place for him to find himself in. But there’s an easy way to avoid situations like this, make readers’ lives much easier, and bring credibility back into blogging.
I think Paul has hit the nail on the head, in fact. The task for bloggers is not to try and eliminate bias. Not only is this a huge challenge, but defeats the entire point of blogging in the first place. The solution is to be completely openly biased, as unusual as that may sound. Instead of trying to pass Apple kiss-assing off as a Pre review, why not simply openly state ‘I have always loved Apple more than Palm. I own everything Apple has ever created. And, yes, they pay me to say that’. This way, when I get to the end of the review, instead of thinking ‘wow, that guy is biased’, I will instead be thinking ‘hmm…he did make some good points about why the iPhone will be better…maybe I should check out another review, though’. There’s nothing wrong with bias; as long as everybody knows about it.
So I’ll be starting my own ‘disclosures’ page, too. Unfortunately nobody is paying me to be biased, though. Yet.
