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January 23, 2005
To blog or not to blog....
So just how noble is it?
Who can argue with Dan Gillmor’s call for a grassroots journalism, a peer-to-peer alternative to the radically deregulated, massively consolidated Murdochian horror that currently passes for the newsmedia? But it sure as hell isn’t going to come from political-pundit and media-wonk bloggers, who with some notable exceptions represent More of The Same: the same gel-headed, glittery eyed weasels who make a career out of torching straw men on Scarborough Country and Sean Hannity; the same attacking heads who reduce each other to chum in what passes for debate on Firing Line; the same corporate flacks, thinktank drones, and bowtie-and-braces neocons who represent the full spectrum of political opinion (from zero-forehead centrism to the far, frothing right) on the PBS Newshour; and worst of all, the same Barcalounger-bound Masters of the Universe who feel well qualified to hold forth on any subject, no matter how arcane. Too much blogging—at least, the blogwonkery embraced by the mainstream media—looks too much like the jowly, sclerotic old white guys in tortoiseshell glasses or the lunging, in-your-face young white guys who already rule the mediaverse. Is this the bottom-up, many-to-many revolution we were promised? Another dictatorship of the commentariat? Another grotesque hypertrophy of the chattering class? None for me, thanks. You can stack your Instapundits like cordword and they still won’t have the empirical authority or moral gravitas, not to mention the hard-swinging old-school literary chops, of one blogger reporter like Chris Allbritton. (Okay, he’s white and he’s a guy, but at least he’s a young white guy, and he’s risking his life to bring back some truth about our imperial adventure in Iraq. Besides, he’s got one of those cool neo-beatVan Dyke things.)
Damn. I wish I wrote like that. I've got a lot more to learn.
This sort of navel gazing is interesting in light of the current discussion about journalistic and blogger ethics.
Personally, I think trying to enforce a set of standards on bloggers would be tantamount to herding cats. I was born anti-authoritarian. I plan to go to my grave that way. I don't see myself signing on to some ethical pledge.
I choose to be ethical because I believe it's the right thing to do. I choose to research and write about topics that interest me or that I think are important. I have no intention to signing on to someone else's standards.
I have a feeling a lot of other bloggers feel the same way.
Posted by Carla at January 23, 2005 11:15 AM