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Blogs are not real journalism
Fiona Fox |
Monday 12 April 2010, 10:47

Once again I've found myself defending journalism against its most ardent critics - journalists.

I was at City University's School of Journalism to present the main findings of the Science Media Centre report on the future of science in the media. Not for the first time I sat next to brilliant science reporters who insisted that any old blogger could do what they do and that the blogosphere is teaming with people reporting, investigating and telling truth to power as well as, if not better than, journalism does.

Despite the fact that most of the panel and almost the entire audience were against me, I'm not buying it. I know I always sound like some ancient Luddite in this discussion (tips on how to sound modern while criticising the blogosphere on a postcard, please - oops, sorry! - posted on my blog), but I think there is a difference between journalism and blogging. And dismissing that distinction when journalism is under threat is not clever.

Don't get me wrong, I love blogs - both as writer and reader. My life is hugely enriched by the daily updates from my own favourite bloggers, but they are not engaged in journalism. Most blogs are self-consciously the strongly held views of opinionated people about their chosen topics.

In fact, that's precisely the beauty of them. In the old days, if the Guardian or Telegraph rejected our rantings, the world would probably never hear them. Now we have created our own medium to get our brilliant insights out there. And of course some blogs may be true, and some may even nod to objectivity and balance, but the blogosphere would be a sadly diminished place if every view expressed had to be balanced, fact-checked, sub-edited and all those other peculiarities of good journalism. In other words, blogs work to a separate set of rules.

The irony is that it's often fans of the blogosphere who end up balking at its extremes and calling for new ways to regulate the web or separate out responsible, accurate blogs from the irresponsible ones - a major preoccupation for those who care about science or public health.

But these calls take us full circle, to why we need something called journalism - perhaps now more than ever. Regulating and policing the blogosphere would kill everything that is good about it. We should simply accept that there is the blogosphere, and there is journalism, and the more sound and fury on the blogosphere, the more need for journalism to do its job - to select, verify, correct, edit, analyse, balance and all those old-fashioned things that journalists are trained to do.

The debate reminded me of the excitement a few years ago about 'citizen journalists'. In the same way that journalists now rush to transfer their job title to anyone with a blog, so ordinary people caught up in often terrible news events - like the 7 July bombings and the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes became 'citizen journalists'.

But there was a fly in the ointment: with seven or eight 'citizen journalists' reporting on the De Menezes shooting, there were seven or eight conflicting accounts. Some of the 'journalists' saw him walking calmly; others saw him running; and one saw him jumping over the ticket barrier. It was left to real journalists to weigh up these different accounts and find other sources to verify the conflicting stories. Thanks to new media, people caught up in these events can transform and enrich journalism in new and exciting ways, but that does not make them journalists

The fact that people can now communicate loads of interesting and important facts and opinions directly to the public is fantastic. In our report for government, we found scientists using blogs in ways that will enhance the public's understanding of and engagement with science. But they are not journalists and, to the journalist in my audience who says that what we call all this stuff doesn't matter, I say words do matter - especially words that denote an entire trade built up around a set of norms.

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Comments

1. At 1:17pm on 12 Apr 2010, Nan wrote:
Not the entire audience Fiona!

I was there, and I agree entirely. There is a distinct difference between blogging and journalism and this difference needs to be recognised BUT the two are not mutually exclusive. Bloggers can be excellent journalists (indeed many are qualified out of work journalists!) - but it is the existence of a continuum - the fact that anyone can blog and this, as you say is the true value of blogs - that means that you must distinguish between the two.

The important thing to appreciate in that particular room of people was that many bloggers are also good journalists.

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2. At 2:27pm on 12 Apr 2010, Sam wrote:
I would disagree, blogs can be real journalism; they are just not limited to it.

I would also point out that your defense that journalists have to fact check etc is woefully lacking from many reports submitted by real journalists (especially when it comes to science).

I would say nan has a better grasp of it in that blogs and real journalism are both parts of the same spectrum, one is highly opinionated and the other heavily cross-referenced, critiqued and fact checked. I'll leave you to decide which you think is which.

Excellent piece but I think that like most areas touched by the net it doesn't create hugely new things, just redefines and changes them. For example blogs are a mixture of specialised article, opinion pieces and hard journalism: exactly like a newspaper.

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3. At 3:09pm on 12 Apr 2010, Paul Bradshaw wrote:
I can hear them saying in the 1950s: We should simply accept that there is television, and there is journalism, and the more sound and fury on the TV, the more need for print journalism to do its job - to select, verify, correct, edit, analyse, balance and all those old-fashioned things that journalists are trained to do.

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4. At 3:17pm on 12 Apr 2010, Paul Bradshaw wrote:
More seriously, as I've said before, the 'Is blogging journalism?' question is like asking 'Is ice cream strawberry?'

Blogging is a quality of technology; journalism is a quality of content. One uses the other - but it cannot be, or not be, the other.

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5. At 4:09pm on 12 Apr 2010, Dr_Aust_PhD wrote:
To say "blogging is not journalism" is a rather meaningless statement as it depends on what definition of "journalism" one picks, surely?

A rather important point is that in blogging about science the bloggers are often people who know far more about science than the journalists who cover it. This is one of the reasons why blog coverage of scientific stories is often far more accurate and informed than what appears in the mainstream media.
Indeed it seems to me, from reading the works of the mainstream media science correspondents, that the ones whose copy is generally more accurate are the ones who follow the science blogs. I wonder what that is telling us?

This also has analogies in other areas; the Jack of Kent blog (written by a lawyer) has been the major source for information on the BCA v Simon Singh libel case, and has quite clearly been a major source for the print and broadcast media journalists covering the story.

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6. At 10:34am on 14 Apr 2010, harrietvickers wrote:
I was also in the audience at this debate, I really don't think this argument is useful (my full take on it's here: [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]).

As journalists blog, bloggers become journalists, journalists churn out PR, PR blog and correct journalists etc all these roles are becoming linked and mixed. Rather than trying to strictly decide who can or cannot claim to be a journalist isn't it better to look for journalistic value? Jack of Kent's blog is a great example.

I agree with Fiona that there's always going to be a need for journalists as gatekeepers, and if this is true I don't see the need to set up these hostile distinctions and barriers (have you seen the SMC's website? Strictly for UK National news media only).

Jokes about Luddites aside, the SMC is going to get left behind unless it acknowledges and works with the great writing out there.

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7. At 12:44pm on 14 Apr 2010, harrietvickers wrote:
Oops, didn't realise we couldn't put links up here.

My post from the debate's on the Wordpress Life of Pi blog.

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8. At 03:44am on 19 Apr 2010, scijourno wrote:
Most blogs are high on opinion, low on evidence.

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9. At 1:38pm on 10 May 2010, Clew123 wrote:
There is such a major difference between bloggers and journalists, it’s unreal and incredibly frustrating when bloggers act like there is not. I am a reporter, and if I happen to find a story or a hint of one on a blog, that is just the start of the process and 100% of the time a lot of work has to go into it to make it into a real story for the paper. In blogs, basic details are missing (who, what, where, when?), there is no real reaction from the community, rarely any decent photos and the vast majority of the stories are swallowed up by comment from the blogger. To say this is journalism is a joke.

Journalists (by this I am talking about news journalists who find stories and write about them - which is what all journalism is based around) train for at least four months to get the basic skills for court and council reporting and interviewing, along with the essentials of Law and government knowledge. Then it’s 18 months of doing the job before you can truly say you are competent at it. To say a guy on a computer pointing out something he saw whilst out on a walk is the same as journalism is, quite frankly, an insult to all the journalists who work so hard and put in such long hours to make sure the job they are doing is done well.

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