Blogging seems to have been around forever, and we bloggers now have to share space on the internet with the increasingly sophisticated websites of the "old media". Even though many traditional journalists now write blogs and tweets alongside their regular output, relations between the practitioners of old and new media remain frosty. Bloggers deride the print media as "dead trees", while "real" journalists portray bloggers as fact-dodging dilettantes or fanatics.
Whereas "real" journalists are scrupulous to ensure accuracy, right? Well, an informal newspaper survey this week (i.e. stuff I've been reading) reveals an article on tax avoidance in the UK that offered an explanation of "employee benefits trusts" that was exactly 180 degrees away from the truth; an insanely complicated graphic of world oil production in which the country marked as Libya was in fact Algeria; and a property survey in which the verbal description of where a particular town was located was directly contradicted by a map right next to the incorrect portion of the text. (My source of expertise here: I was born in the town in question).
None of these trivial and tedious little errors can possibly fit the old journalistic cliche of "a fact too good to check" (i.e a fact that so perfectly proves the point you are trying to make that you don't want to risk finding out it's wrong). No, all three are the result of journalistic sloppiness, plain and simple. In each case the journalist didn't bother getting it right and the subs didn't know it was wrong.
A dozen years ago there was a major journalistic scandal at the much-admired US news magazine, New Republic*. Its star journalist of the day, a callow youth named Stephen Glass**, was found to have faked, entirely or in part, about two-thirds of the feature articles he had authored for the magazine. The story was made into a low-key Hollywood movie, "Shattered Glass", which aired on TV in the UK this week. (Originally when I posted this I called the movie "Broken Glass", but when I checked later I realised I'd got it wrong. This definitely proves something, but I've no idea what it is). Through the sheer strength of his imagination and the excellence of his writing, Glass was able to overcome the rigorous fact verification that was supposed to precede the publication of every article. It transpired that having concocted his stories, often out of thin air, he would simply invent the research and interview notes to support them. Every story was, in the eyes of his superiors, too good to check.
Nobody checks this blog, which is why you will sometimes find typos in it. And I don't have time to go back to original sources for all the things I write about, though I do try to provide links when possible, so that readers can check what I'm saying for themselves, if they want. Many bloggers do the same -- Chris Dillow, for example, writes far more rigorously and provides far more references and links than any "real" journalist on business and politics that I'm aware of.
The key difference between bloggers and journalists, however, and one that I'd say works in favour of bloggers, is this: bloggers only write when they have something to say about something that interests them, whereas journalists have to fill the pages every day, writing against deadlines and with an editor leaning over their shoulder. (Jerry Seinfeld once said that it was amazing that the amount of news that happened every day always exactly matched the amount of space in the newspapers). I'd bet that the three little errors I cited above arose because the journalists in question were writing about something they had never thought about before and might never think about again, and doing it with a deadline to meet into the bargain. In common with most bloggers, I don't have to worry about those things.
So, reader, if you want to be reasonably certain of getting a full spectrum of news, you need to read the papers. You won't get that from the blogosphere. But if you want opinions from people who actually care about the subjects they write about, and don't have to reflect anyone's views but their own, you might be better off following a variety of bloggers. And unlike the NYT, Wall St Journal or The Times, none of us has yet figured out a way to make you pay for the privilege.
* NR used to brag that it was "the inflight magazine of Air Force One". Really? I'd have thought in the Clinton era that was probably "Playboy", and under Bush Jr, "People" or maybe a Li'l Abner omnibus edition.
** After leaving journalism, Glass wrote a novel called "The Fabulist". Guess what it's about.
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