January 2006

As Perceived editor Adam Christie offers some thoughts about the relationship between online and 'conventional' communication.


Blogging in perspective

LET's keep some sort of perspective: Blogs are rarely news. They may be journalism, in that they provide a day-to-day account of an individual's view of the world, but they are more comment than news.

In 2005, the US became a hotbed of argument between bloggers and 'conventional' news media, but the most crucial question was rarely addressed: which do I believe most, bloggers or the 'conventional'?

My answer would still be the conventional, because bloggers offer more opinion than fact and blogs contain single-source personal perspectives. (A well-established newspaper letter-writing in the UK, Keith Flett, has similar views.)

Yes, there are times - such as conflicts and disasters - when such perspectives are very valuable and can inform millions of others around the world and everyone, where freedom of expression actually exists as a human right, can comment on their governments and other happenings around them.

I have - I believe - a fairly healthy view of the matter. I'm a journalist, and I blog, in that I use a website to showcase my writing. This is it.

News is a commodity. Stories which are scurrilous or politically 'sensitive' are valuable.

Arm's length
The debate is made more complex, because some news organizations or editors may be afraid of breaking political stories.

If they can report that someone else has made the revelation, the ire of proprietor or politician, especially where commercial and political interests converge, can easily be diverted: 'It wasn't us, boss. We just reported what the other guys were saying.'

The technique has been refined by broadsheet newspapers in the UK. Editors who wouldn't be the first to use stories more the realm of tabloids such as The Sun, the Mirror or the News of the World can joyously report how those papers are covering the latest celebrity scandal, while claiming not to be sullying their pages with such gossip.

Belief and credibility
Where a citizenry has a relatively sophisticated understanding of how the media works - and here I would contrast greatly the United States and the United Kingdom - then readers and viewers know that those who respond to papers or programmes are largely unrepresentative.

There remains, of course, an argument about who is better informed. However hateful some tabloid headlines may be, it is probably the UK with its diversity of daily newspapers (and no city monopolies) and legal obligations on broadcasters to be fair that is better. (A similar obligation on US broadcasters was quietly dropped when Ronald Reagan was President and the results have become all too clear.)

E-mails and text messages may have changed that a little, but dashing off a pithy one-liner is not the same as making the effort and taking the time to write a 'proper' letter to an editor, or complaining to the Press Complaints Commission, the Advertising Standards Authority, the super-regulator Ofcom, or the BBC governors.

Journalists starting their careers on weekly newspapers or on local radio quickly learn that it is those with passions who have the energy and commitment to write or call in. Phone-in show producers quickly discover that having too few callers, a core of ranters and ravers can drive away rather than attract listeners. Newspaper editors can recognise co-ordinated letter-writing just as quickly as politicians.

Blogging may be a little easier than writing to a newspaper. Publication is guaranteed and the software to upload material onto the internet may be more convenient than going to the post office to buy stamps, but the same scepticism should be applied to a blog as to a radio call-in or a newspaper letter.

Who reads blogs anyway? Journalists with a nose for stories that have a cash value can make a lot of money from scouring the net and selling on the more scurrilous items that they find, safe in the knowledge that ideas are not copyright, only their expression.

Trawling round blogs can be far more profitable for newsdesks than the traditional method of calling the emergency services. Web scourers are the word equivalent of the paparazzi who tour stars' homes and hang-outs in the hope of snapping that one picture that will make a million.

Transparency
Blogging has - like newspapers which were conned into accepting opinion articles from academics who had been paid by governments or politicians - got itself a bad name.

Too little blogging is transparent. Think-tanks with misleading names haven't helped. And, the opinions of bloggers are skewed by the digital divide. The perspective of poverty is rarely online, simply because the poor do not have access to the technology, assuming literacy of course, necessary to get online.

Therefore, codes of conduct - such as that adopted by the National Union of Journalists - which emphasise the difference between opinion and news have great strengths and merits.

'Blog culling' - the practice of harvesting material from blogs that has become increasingly common in newspapers, magazines and on radio and television broadcasts - is replacing original journalism too. While opinions have their place, knowing what is going on, so we can all comment and decide how to use our individual political strengths, is surely more basic and important than knowing what others think.

Blogging is still a relatively new phenomenon. And, like using e-mail where communication takes place without the essential dimensions of tone of voice, facial expression and body language, blogging's evolution is not really very advanced.

'Smileys' and 'emoticons' are a step in the right direction, but they are little more than graphical adverbs. Digital communication is advancing very quickly, and some of us are struggling to keep up with the pace.

Addressing witness contributions and blogging is just another step in this never-ending evolutionary process.