Don’t Threaten Me, You Little People!
It appears that yet another fellow has been hired at the Andrew Keen Institute for Self-Important Cockbaggery. Via Ed Brayton, I find that former a NBC reporter has unleashed righteous fury against those who threaten the prestige of the journalistic profession. The guy invokes all the standard anti-blogger arguments: no quality control, needs regulation, blah blah blah, yadda yadda, *snore*. What I find interesting is this (and of course, I mean “interesting” in the same way that randomly encountering a sack of severed penises is “interesting”):
But unlike those other professions, journalism — at least in the United States — has never adopted uniform self-regulating standards. There are commonly accepted ethical principles — two source confirmation of controversial information or the balanced reporting of both sides of a story, for example, but adhering to the principles is voluntary. There is no licensing, testing, mandatory education or boards of review. Most other professions do a poor job of self-regulation, but at least they have mechanisms to regulate themselves. Journalists do not.
There is a reason that journalism doesn’t have any “mechanisms for self-regulation” akin to those of other “professions”. Historically, journalism hasn’t been considered a “profession”, until very recently it was considered a blue-collar trade. The skills associated with it grew organically from the original scribblers in the early days of a widely available printing press. All the complaints against bloggers nowadays were used against pamphleteers and newspaper publishers back in those days, and all of them were equally valid in both contexts. There is and was a lot of inaccuracy and often outright misreporting, but then as now we recognize that such is the price of having a free public discourse and communication. The only reason this idiot doesn’t recognize this is because he sees a large number of bloggers freely publishing their own content as a threat to him and his profession. Tough shit, asshole.
He also misses the main benefit of the blogosphere. It’s not so much that it replaces traditional journalism, but that it complements it. As Ed points out in his own post on the subject, the analysis journalists provide on complex issues is often abysmal, mainly due to the fact that they have no expertise or background in the subject matter being discussed. Even in technology-centric magazines like WIRED, you’ll very often find serious howlers on new technological and scientific breakthroughs and their implications. Of course, I understand that WIRED can’t be expected to maintain the same quality standards as Communications of the ACM, it’s a popular level publication. But if you want, for instance, to know about quantum computing research, Dave Bacon and Scott Aaronson are bound to provide deeper and more reliable info than the editorial staff at WIRED.
And this is true of commentary in general. Look at the commentary circuit on any cable news channel and compare it to the biggest political and legal blogs out there. You tell me which has more depth: elaborate posts from knowledgeable people in the pertinent disciplines or 5 minute segments on a cable news program? There is no question in my mind.
