Search Engines Level the Playing Field for Bloggers - The Other Side
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The Other Side
On the other hand, you have those same bloggers, who may or may not be qualified to report on what they consider news, feel that this view is nothing more than a symptom of jealousy. They think the professional journalists are acting like spoiled children, who petulantly stamp their feet and declare, “It’s not fair!” Because they’ve gotten their way for so long, and now the tables are turning, it probably does feel unfair.
What may bother these journalists the most is the idea that many bloggers, who are not motivated by money or fame, may actually be writing better articles and news stories than the paid journalists are. The big fear here could be that blogging may make the career journalist obsolete.
When reading the news, it does occur to me that there is almost always a biased slant to the story, as it is difficult for humans to be objective on any subject. Many might disagree with me here, but how many times do you see a news story where facts make up about 20 percent of an article, and the rest is fluffed with opinion and hearsay? What makes a paid journalist more qualified than you or I to report on the same issues? What makes his or her opinion more important that ours?
In the Reuter’s article, they reported on talking to media critic Jeff Jarvis, author of the blog Buzzmachine. He had stated that he felt like major sources of news sites such as Yahoo and Google patronized bloggers and treated them as if they were secondary sources of news. Most of your paid journalists, I’m sure, would agree that they are secondary.
Jarvis, who is a former TV critic for TV Guide and People magazines, scoffed at the notion that journalists have some sort of a shared set of professional standards, or code of ethics, if you will, and that they are better trained or more trustworthy than bloggers.
He said, “What made the voice of the people somehow less important than the paid professional journalist?" he asked. "You don't need to have a degree, you don't need to have a paycheck, you don't need to have a byline," Jarvis said. "If you inform the public, you are committing an act of journalism," he declared.
In fact, it is often that paycheck and byline that might motivate the journalist’s bias on the story in the first place. What motive does a blogger have for introducing a bias? No more motive than anyone, I suppose. But you will time and time again hear arguments that only the pros have a handle on what is really newsworthy.
While it seems an unspoken code of ethics in the media industry to carefully separate out the “news” from the “newsworthy,” it is certainly not the way we as humans think and interact. When we talk or think about something that is interesting to us, we don’t separate our knowledge of factual information from our other impressions. So what really makes the news newsworthy? And further, who decided it to be such?
Next: News or Newsworthy >>
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