Editor’s note: This op-ed is by award-winning journalist Telly Halkias. It first appeared in the Portland Sun.
With the advent of the Internet and the proliferation of personal weblogs, or blogs – online running journals by private citizens — journalism as a profession and a business has been forced to evolve at a pace never before seen by the Fourth Estate.
But while some have anointed the casual blogger a citizen journalist, there still remains a chasm of standards between the two, most notably in the framework and the rigor with which information is presented to the public.
It’s one of the reasons that virtually every news organization online now has their news staffers also joining in on the blogging – for good reason (more on that below).
The impression that personal opinion blogs are somehow akin to the op-ed section of a newspaper is one that has been in vogue for some time. Also, the argument that citizen bloggers have contributed to keeping journalists more honest in the Digital Age is a valid one.
Nevertheless, there is a major difference between the two groups.
Professional opinion journalists typically have far more training, education, experience and legal know-how about what and how they write than most casual bloggers. Many come from hard news backgrounds, so they have been on the reporting side, if not still currently reporting.
Others commentators, such as regular paid columnists and bloggers, often possess some level of professional expertise in their stated fields.
Yes, we mentioned journalists who blog; their contributions are meant to complement the news as well as give the audience a more personal touch.
But an everyday casual blogger is not similar to the op-ed staff of a news organization. Spewing a viewpoint is easy; doing so to journalistic standards – even with the looser benchmarks of the editorial — whatever we might perceive as consumers, is not.
For instance, a friend once mentioned to me that a blog set up by someone who served in Afghanistan might be able to offer us a perspective that a war correspondent could not. Its candidness would be missing from news dispatches. Knowing I’ve worked as a journalist and had previously served in the military, my buddy was curious if I would side with the blogger.
Such bloggers can’t speak for anyone but themselves, yet often do. They draw broad conclusions from a very narrow set of circumstances when they aren’t always privy to the big picture.
But affinity has nothing to do with it. Indeed, this is the one thing that gets news reporters in trouble — not muting their own biases.
The combat veteran’s blog – there are many of them out there — can provide insider looks at things that a generation ago, when many journalists still had served themselves, could also have provided. It can also give informed opinion, depending on the subject.
Today, however, with veterans in the rank of journalists a dying breed, reporters can’t always offer as much as that grunt blogger.
But, as with any other blog, the projected view is a filtered look at one person’s experience. Such bloggers can’t speak for anyone but themselves, yet often do. They draw broad conclusions from a very narrow set of circumstances when they aren’t always privy to the big picture.
For example, an inside view of combat to which my friend alluded is going to be highly biased. That doesn’t mean it will be dishonest or inaccurate, but it must always be considered given the context of the author’s experience.
While that sounds intuitive, given the nature of the subject reported, it remains raw in terms of applying the rigor of journalistic processes to it, such as sourcing, fact-checking, editing, etc.
The information can be meaningful in terms of one person’s observations, emotions, and reflections, but must also cross check with similar accounts to have enduring substance.
The military, for instance, trains and certifies field historians in these methods, and adheres to the need for stringent documentation in its own official histories. But unless corroborated by multiple reliable and independent sources, the observations of news-related items in a personal blog, such as one on Afghanistan, remains hearsay.
A contributing factor is that a private will see the same event differently than a sergeant, and the latter will see it differently than a captain — because all have different duties and responsibilities inherent in that operation. By the same token, an infantryman will see it differently than a medic.
And this applies to almost every organizational model – and individual blogger.
It’s not as easy as just putting yourself online. Unlike edited news, there is considerable analysis and synthesizing missing. And without that, the consumer doesn’t get context. Absent of framework, the broader perspective of the observation is lost.
So while citizens contribute value to information distribution with the click of their computer mouse, to offer them major journalistic credit might be a bit premature.
If we did, then maybe they all deserve boxes of Perry White’s cigars, and the guys in the newsroom can wear their pajamas to work.
You may e-mail Telly Halkias at tchalkias@aol.com or follow on Twitter: @TellyHalkias
