This is my first blog so HEY FOLKS,
Blogs seem to be the "in thing" at the moment. Every paper I read, internet news site I visit and every news programme (radio and TV) I hear say
..how great blogging is..
..a wonderful medium for anyone, anywhere with anything to say..
..another source of information..
and so on.
There are also negatives.
..it only propagates rumours..
..not everyone has something interesting to say..
..there is too much information to wade through..
..it's not a legitimate source of information.
(Strangely I never hear anything regarding blogs from my everyday friends. They’re a cross section of 25 to 35 year olds ranging from engineers, solicitors, bankers, teachers, IT, recruiters, accountants, and project managers…..not what you would describe as internet illiterates….note there are no media professional list in my everyday friends….read on)
All the above point of view listed regarding blogging, in my opinion, are true. The negatives I'm not too worried about. The internet from the start was a great source of information but where 99% was useless or irrelevant to my daily life. But I get through it. Modern search engines like Google, Ask, MSN and Yahoo make sense of it and therefore the internet useful. Not everyone has something interesting to say, but that always been the same before the internet existed. Newspapers roughly publish the same volume information every day, but rarely has a newspaper gripped me from page to page. As for legitimacy and rumours, well the old media isn’t the gold standard in these either. Read the stories behind similar headline news in The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Mail and you’ll get 5 different stories of varying goodness to badness, opinions and suggestions. As for the Red Top can you possible believe half the news they come out with? But I’ve (and I think the public at large) learned to filter this. The FT is pro-liberalised economy, the Guardian make more sense when read through the eyes of a teacher/social services and the Mail through that of an ultra conservative.
No I’m actually worried about the positive point of view on the internet and blogging in particular. Ask yourself who is more likely to write a blog? Who would actually like to writing a blog? Who can make boring everyday stories interesting? Reporters, journalist, novelist etc.
Now I’m not having dig at people who have committed their life to the pen. They are the corner stone of free speech, and free speech is the corner stone of democracy. But they are not everybody. Prior to the internet, news (nationally and internationally) could only be gotten via TV, radio and newspaper. Opinion and points of view were delivered to us by a few people. Even government can only be seen through a layer of reporters. The internet has given arise to another channel, where everybody could contribute to the debate. But as the internet grew and data it contained became vast, people congregated at a few websites (relative to the number in existence) to get the information they require. These sites like Yahoo, AOL, BBC etc. compile their news by reporters. Even were the opinion of the public is given, it’s edited by editors (who are reporters).
So what’s so bad about getting all your news from people who do it professionally? They can be an impartial point of view sense the story usually doesn’t involve them. They are professionals and have means and ways of getting to the heart of the story. They routinely report (evening news), from a permanent source (TV) and a familiar format so saving us time in locating news stories.
But here lies the rub? Watch Euronews (if you can get it on cable or satellite) or read the short columns in the financial section of a broad sheet newspaper. This is raw news reporting, literally just the fact mam. Boring Boring Boring. A bit of opinion, an introduction to where it’s coming from, predicting were the story is going, a panel of “experts”, sound bites, reports from the people most effected etc. These techniques are employed to make the news more interesting and therefore more watch able or readable. But these said techniques used by a third party (a reporter) can lead to over hyping of news.
SARS, Birdflu, MMR, Mad Cow Disease, Foot and Mouth, the Dot.com boom are only some examples of where reporting moved from informative to being hysterical. The people the newspaper and TV station deployed to cover the story are not experts on these topics but end up shaping our opinion and view of them. Over critical and over bias reporting can affect judgment in trials such as OJ Simpson and Michael Jackson. One has to wonder if it wasn’t for the 24/7 media coverage would they both have gotten off? And of course the most current over hyped story is Global Warming. Storms destroying News Orleans, water shortages in South East England are all being directly linked to it by the press, but where scientists are says it’s an indirect side effect (New Orleans) and anyone in the water industry will tell you that the issue of water shortage in London are more to do with bad management over 20 years than lack of rain. I’m taking global warming seriously, but I learned little from the media. In my opinion they spend way too much time with what wrong with the world now and decision that need to be made for the future. There is little understanding of how and why we got here. Coal is a dirty fuel that produced too much CO2 is only part truths and does it little justification. We first have to look back of how we arrived here to understand where we’re going to go in the future.
Its here I believe where blogging can help. The side stories, the opinion of the masses, industry insiders and so can air their view and show us another side of the story. But I fear in time this too this will be a dominated by main stream professional media. Already many newspaper and TV reporters have personal blogs to continue their coverage of what ever story they are doing or just air other views. I have read many and they tend to be good, but I don’t think my knowledge of the subjects being covered were extended more as it is effectively the source and same opinion. This coupled with main stream media advertising their reports blog only enforces the fact we’ll get our news from the same source as we did 20 years ago. The internet has arrived but what has changes? More news? Yes. Can access it when we want? Yes. More diverse reporting? Time will tell.
