Popehat addresses the status of bloggers vs. journalists

I had the privilege of meeting Ron Magers, the longtime news anchor at Chicago's ABC-7, at the CBA's Kogan Awards Luncheon last May. Mr. Magers was there as the keynote speaker; I was there as a nominee for one of the awards.

Mr. Magers' address concerned the many changes in the media and reporting that he's observed in the course of his illustrious career. He devoted a good deal of his talk to the impact of the Internet, both good and bad. Among the things he didn't like were 'news aggregators,' that is, sites that take content from other sites, often quoting liberally from the sources. Links may be provided back to the original sites, but if enough content is stolen, er, quoted, who needs to go back and read the original? The aggregators may deliver some web traffic to the original sources, but they siphon off some, too -- and, meanwhile, they sell ads on their pages to make money. Some of them make a lot of money.

Another thing that Mr. Magers wasn't too keen on was blogging and bloggers. While some bloggers may do some original work, he conceded, others are merely shouting from soapboxes in Bughouse Square... or in pajamas from their mothers' basements.

One of the best bloggers out here in the Ether, Ken, of Popehat, had a great post yesterday entitled, "Blogging: Compared To What?" I wish I'd had Ken's post in my back pocket when I heard Mr. Magers speak last May. At the risk of sinking to the level of a mere aggregator, allow me to quote liberally:

Despite how mainstream bloggers have become, and despite the fact that almost all "mainstream media" outlets have their own bloggers, the prevailing attitude seems unchanged in more than a decade: bloggers, we're told, are unreliable, biased, wild-eyed pajama-clad basement-dwellers.

Apart from the pajamas and basement part, I think this is irrefutably true. Bloggers are biased and unreliable.

Here's the key question: compared to what?

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This is not to say you should trust bloggers. You should exercise skepticism about what you read on blogs. You should use your independent judgment about their work product.

But why, exactly, shouldn't we do the same with "mainstream" journalism outlets? By what stretch of the imagination are they reliable just because they have the big name?

I've seen this quote attributed to Mark Twain -- but I can't confirm that it really is one of his: "If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed." Whether Twain said it or not, it is a pretty true statement.

The best defense against misinformation is to cultivate multiple sources of information -- even if some of them are blogs -- and always maintain a healthy sense of skepticism.

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Arguably related: You can't believe everything on the Internet... or on TV... or in the newspaper, for that matter. Now what?