Ellen Goodman Pats Herself on the Back

Ellen Goodman today aims a broadside at the entire world of bloggers on behalf of the allegedly more responsible, old media:

Nevertheless, this is not a good moment for the bustling, energetic Wild West of the new Internet media. Remember when a former CBS executive described bloggers as guys in pajamas writing in their living rooms? Well, it seems that many have only one exercise routine: jumping to conclusions. . . . The printouts on my desk describe the 28-year-old journalist, a hostage and victim for 82 terrifying days, as something between Patty Hearst and Baghdad Jane, between a traitor and ”Princess Jill.” TBone posted a potshot, calling Carroll ”a liar” and the kidnapping ”a total scam.” PA Pundits said that ”I still just can’t get past her being (for the most part) unharmed.” And Debbie Schlussel called her a ”spoiled brat America-hater.” . . . I newspapers are the first rough draft of history, a blog is like reading a never-ending draft as it’s being written and published, mostly unedited, without standards or correction boxes. Defenders will tell you that blogs are ”fact-checked” in the rough and tumble of the marketplace by other bloggers. But don’t count on it.

This is the most sanctimonious and self-serving spin on a public controversy I’ve seen in years. Nothing any of those folks did reflects on anyone but the authors themselves.

Consider the fallacies involved. A few hand-picked quotes are used to demean an entire universe of people writing their widely varied opinions and impressions of unfolding events. A false class or community is named–bloggers–that does little to identify who are what is at fault.

Goodman tidily ignores that the mainstream media too suffers from blindspots when it reports on unfolding events. Remember the “plane exploded on the mall” story from CNN and others on 9/11 or “Dewey Defeats Truman.” Blogging is not a thing, per se. It’s just people opining. Some bloggers are honest and fair and careful and well-respected. Others are less so. Their readership and credibility depends on these factors. They cannot ride on the built-in authority of a newspaper or television network. It’s been rightly described as a “low trust environment” where citations to authority in the forms of hyperlinks are a standard practice and appeals to one’s own authority are frowned upon.

Goodman’s sanctimony ignores the numerous failings of the mainstream media: the nearly unedited transmittal of commercial press-releases; the strong left bias of what is news and how it should be reported; the naked partisanship and clumsiness of stories like the Dateline “exploding truck” fabrication or Dan Rather’s egregious use of forged documents; the utter lack of courage in dealing with militant Islam; finally, her criticism of blogs ignores how the media can engineer non-stories like the alleged church-burning scandal or how real scandals like black on white crime can be swept under the rug.

In short, this is a crummy piece of opinion writing by someone who sees a real threat to the previous era of journalistic immunity from criticism. Indeed, until recently, journalists were only criticized as much as they allowed themselves to be; after all, they got to decide which letters to the editor to publish, which stories to run or not, and how to address their own mistakes, if at all. Now, when ordinary people can disseminate their opinions widely through blogs, the walls are crumbling and the line between media opinions and ordinary people’s are not so sharp. They’re all just opinions that will be persuasive or not based on their integrity, rigor, and sensibility.