It’s one of the most popular arguments on the blogosphere.
Some people — mostly bloggers — believe that they are automatically every bit as much a “journalist” as professional reporters. Others — mostly reporters — tend to disagree with that blanket statement.
The best response I’ve read in answer to that question is that bloggers can be journalists when they practice journalism. And by journalism, I mean the fair and balanced reporting of truth without commentary or bias.
It’s true — I’ve never denied — that some professional reporters seem incapable of doing so. The difference is that most of them have been through journalism school and have taken courses that should have prevented that kind of failure.
Bloggers who aren’t professional journalists likely have not. So when they pull it off, it’s definitely worth notice. But it isn’t the norm.
Working in the media, even after more than sixteen years, I am still amazed by the rudeness and resentment people toss our way. We receive emails written by people who are clearly lying in wait for anything they happen to disagree with, whether their position is based on fact or not, so that they can be as snide as they can while calling us “biased” and much worse.
There is never the assumption that anyone in the media might have made an honest mistake. There is always the presumption of guilt, of conspiracy, of mind control.
Always.
These same people, I have no doubt, would not tolerate for a moment anyone treating them that way. Yet they seem to feel some sort of self-righteousness strong enough to justify just about anything they want to say. Some of them probably never miss a church service. They probably love children and animals. Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth the rest of the time…until they have something to say about the media.
An example of the blogosphere going on attack towards traditional reporters is in the case of the deaths of Channon Christian and Chris Newsom.
The bodies of the young Knoxville couple were found in January. They had been sexually assaulted and murdered. The couple was white; five black men were subsequently arrested for the crime.
At some point since that discovery, a rumor started appearing on the internet. Picked up by many bloggers who clearly had a bone to pick with the media — for whatever reason — as well as chips on their shoulder the size of Montana, they started demanding answers: why had “the media” ignored this story? Was it because of racism? Wouldn’t “the media” have been only too happy to report the case if two blacks had been murdered by five whites? Maybe, some began suggesting, because of the way the bodies had been sexually mutilated. Reports that the woman’s breasts and the man’s genitals had been hacked off were cited as the reason the story went largely “unreported” because, they hypothesized, if word of the sexual mutilations leaked out, it might result in an anti-black backlash. “The media” is far too “pro-black” to stand for that, they suggest.
The bloggers, particularly those who see themselves as being “better” than traditional journalists, decided that they would do what they said journalists seemed to refuse to do: “set the record straight.”
Buckle your seatbelts, friends. There are a few problems with this story.
For one, “the media” has been covering this story. This link takes you to Knoxville television station WBIR that reported the story way back on January 16th. The Associated Press transmitted the story nationally, according to this report from MSNBC that focuses on the blogger attacks. Did the national media cover it? It would depend on the media outlets, and I don’t have an immediate answer for you; I do know, however, that there are plenty of stories that get reported that I don’t see, and I work in the media. Just because you didn’t see a story doesn’t mean it wasn’t reported somewhere. Still, the story was out there and available to be reported.
Second, there is the race issue. The media is accused of burying the story to avoid portraying blacks negatively. However, the victims’ own parents say that they don’t think the crime was racially-motivated. Investigators say that they have no evidence that this was a hate crime, but rather just a brutal murder of two people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. If the parents and the police feel that way, that’s an angle of the story that any media outlet determined to “avoid negative publicity” against black people would have been only too eager to report, a fact that shoots down the racial bias charge.
Third, there’s a far more basic problem with the story as reported by the blogosphere: the most heinous aspect of the murder, the sexual mutilation, didn’t even happen, according to a police spokesman who worked the case. And Channon’s own father also confirms that such reports are not true:
“People have stretched it out of proportion. It was horrific. They were tortured. Most of it [on the web] is speculation.”
Perhaps this third aspect of the blogosphere’s representation of the situation is most telling of the problem of so-called “citizen journalism.”
Journalists — the real kind — are supposed to check the facts before printing them. Any time they inaccurately report something, these same bloggers are ready to crucify them for getting it wrong. Yet the bloggers find a reason to get worked up, and they do so, without checking the facts themselves, relying instead on rumors started by someone who apparently had their own agenda.
So the question becomes, Which is worse: A media outlet that doesn’t overplay a particular story — as in, “If it bleeds, it leads” — for reasons unknown, or the media critics who falsely portray not only those media outlets’ motives, but the facts of the story itself? (Not because they give a damn about the couple or their families, mind you, but because they have their own issues with prejudice leading them to want to see a story portraying black on white crime?)
I’ve seen time and time again those bloggers who fancy themselves “journalists” and who seem to feel their blog entitles them to that title. These people need to consider this important point: if that’s all it really should require to be every bit as much a journalist as a “professional” is, then they should stop criticizing the media, because there clearly aren’t enough prerequisites in terms of training for real journalists to start with.
To put it another way, if real journalists are to be fairly held to a higher standard, it has to be more than having a blog that warrants that higher level of scrutiny.
Logically, it has to be one or the other. It can’t be both.
If you’re going to criticize the way someone does something, the way you do the same thing ought to be above reproach.
