Survey Says

The Volokh Conspiracy had a recent post entitled "Accurate but Fake" which may go some way to explaining the paradox you describe here. Credibility is indeed essential to the top-tier bloggers, but accuracy is only one of the factors which go into building credibility. Transparency is even more important, and that's what usually is missing from the MSM.

As for holding bloggers to the same standards and ethics as journalists, would that be a step up or down?

As far as I can tell, accuracy is no more (or less) fundamental to blogging, than it is to talking. People blog for many reasons, just as they talk for many reasons. Depending on the context, accuracy, reputation and credibility may be more or less important to them. I haven't seen the survey (is there a link?) but I might guess the fallacy here is trying to apply generalized statements to "bloggers" as an undifferentiated group. Better to ask, "should journalistic standards of accuracy be applied to bloggers that represent themselves as sources of factual reporting?"

Sorry, there isn't a link. Just something that was sent in an email. I'll ask for one. These comments really are very interesting. They get at the idea of pinpointing what your intentions are.

Love what you're doing here. It's absolutely a step in the right direction, both for you (the "MSM") and for bloggers. Thank you.

As for accuracy: as most bloggers will gladly tell you, if they screw up, someone will let them know it immediately. Most of us are willing to accept we make mistakes, and publish a correction. That differs from the MSM in that we usually do it IMMEDIATELY, rather than a day or three later, we do it right there where the mistake was made, and we (usually) try to put the correct information forward. Truly, bloggers are just as prone to mistakes as any other human being. We also know that our reputation for accuracy depends on making a correction immediately. A newspaper may not lose readers for a single error, but a blog can, and probably will.

Suggestion: Make an email address to your blogging staff available for indirect comments and suggestions.

>But I thought that accuracy was fundamental to blogging.

Accurracy isn't the only part of journalism ethics that matter. Conflict of interest is probably more important than accurracy.

You should come to SXSW next year. I'll buy you a few beers and introduce you to blogging in Austin.

Seth

So this is a dude posting to the bolg

Congrats on your blog. I hope BW keeps it.

I'm glad you raised the issue of accuracy. It is, after all, a fundamental pillar of the trust that forms between producers and consumers of content. If, for example, I am watching television news coverage of a major event - say, the Pope's election - and I instantaneously decide that the channel I'm currently watching has hired a group of monkeys to provide color commentary from St. Peter's Square, I am absolutely free to flip channels until I find one whose broadcasters give me a warmer, fuzzier feeling - who convince me that what they're saying is relatively close to what's going on.

In other words, I'll stick with the ones I trust, and abandon the ones I don't. This basic ethos applies to both traditional and new media. I don't see why blogs are viewed any differently - in this regard, anyway - than, say, newspapers.

When we choose to spend our finite amount of free time consuming content, the decision process by which we settle on our favorites is a universal one.

Welcome to the blogosphere. Impressive article, and impressive blog.

Carmi Levy

Wow, it seems to me that the evolving mix of user-generated content and mainstream media opens a Pandorra's box of questions on copyrright, Intellectual property, journalistic standards and even privacy invasion issues. The nature of blogging, podcasting and even PSPcasting (retrofitting the PSP for videocasts)is 'on-the-fly' -- it tends to lead to linking, tagging and even grabbing of text and images in real-time with only 'implied' or no permissions from rights holders. In an era where IP rights are so controversial my concern is that the Blogosphere is a Tinder Box ready to explode. All too often bloggers report 3rd,4th & 5th hand...even responsible reporters don't always use what they used to call in Journ 100 -- "proper attribution" and because bloggers tend to be one-man/woman bands -- they are fact checker, reporter, researcher, writer and editor all rolled in one. I know as a blogger www.hollywood2020.blogs.com I write faster and post faster than I do as a columnist for an online pub I write for. The good news is I can update my posts almost instantly. The bad news is that they are RSS'd out almost instantly too. So who owns what becomes almost a mute question or does it? If I'm posting to BLOGSPOTTER am I giving Business Week -- the magazine rights to reprint my post in the print edition. By logging into post am I 'opting' in for BUSINESS WEEK spam? Where are the privacy statements and the eTruste organization for blogs? If there are no picture captions where do you put the photo credits? Or do you? Not to point fingers but where did you get your TRAINSPOTTING photos? Believe me I share the challenge 4 years of journalism school, 2 years of graduate film school and now with a quick screen-grab or an excerpt of some other blogger's post I could be concerned with a lot more than just accuracy. Hopefully, I made it to enuf of the 8 am. Journalism law classes to keep me on the straight and narrow...but what about the blogger who hasn't even taken newswriting 101 -- he/she may not feel any moral responsiblity to even spell my name right, let alone get the facts correct. Who owns what in the blogosphere seems to be akin to the Wild West land grab era-- this time it's just a content rush.

Thank you for that rhetorical question there at the end. Amen!

Of course, the profession of journalism is only sort of loosely self-regulating. It's not like you lose your license to practice because of ethical breaches, as you might if you belonged to the bar association or the American Medical Association.

Brazil recently floated a proposal to do just that: make journalism a licensed profession analogous to law and medicine, and boy, was there hell to pay. Of course, journalistic ethics are not as complicated as legal ethics or medical ethics. Tell the truth, follow some simple procedures to provide a minimum of balance, and disclose your biases. That's about it. You don't need a M.Journ. to remember that.

Of course, professional journalists can and sometimes do get fired for ethical breaches, like plagiarism. Others don't: Judith Miller. But even if one does get the axe, that needn't be a death blow to one's professional life these days. That Glass fellow and Jason wrote books. And one can always simply turn to blogging and cast fact-checking onto the dustheap of history, like Andrew Sullivan.

First mistake: Talking about bloggers as if they are uniform. Second mistake: Assuming all bloggers are trying to be like journalists. Well, the two are related mistakes. Or maybe just the one mistake. Blogging isn't journalism.

Journalism is about appearing fair and unbalanced. A required stance when one holds a priviledged position of power - the control of the head of a one way network.

Blogging isn't about being in a position of power, it is about being in a conversation. And conversation is about having something to talk about, something disagree about. And to be able to disagree, the parties must actually take positions, defend their positions, and possibly update their positions as new information becomes available.

Thus blogging is about not being balanced and fair. And that, in a lot of ways, is why it is more human. Humans are opinionated. We have a view of the world, formed from hundreds of sources, and it is different to our neighbours. Means we have something to talk about.

I mean, even your post suffers from this problem. You don't take a position on your observation that bloggers aren't to be held to the same ethical standard. You imply that this isn't what you expect, but you aren't willing to put your balls on the line and say that you feel this is wrong, and the reasons you feel this are...

See, being human means having feelings. Something the papers haven't had in a long time.

I just wish the major news networks on television would wake up and realize that Ben Affleck getting engaged to Jennifer Garner, Paula Abdul supposedly dating a former American Idol contestant and/or taking drugs, or Jennifer Lopez wearing furs in a music video are not appropriate NEWS stories if they want to be respected as news organizations. People who care about that trash can read the tabloids and watch one of the gazillion Entertainment Tonight spinoffs. Maybe it is just a fact of life when multinational corporations own too much - plugging their products as news stories is just par for the garbage.

The need for accuracy is truly in the eye of the beholder. A sad fact about a lot of people is that they would rather read an intriguing "story" even if contrived with bogus information than be bored with accurate and precise "facts" that don't tell as compelling a story.

Besides, so many stories in the media concern forecasts of the future (social security, deficits, economic outlook, foreign policy, global warming, etc.), so "facts" are somewhat moot there, other than merely to accurately quote sources.

One thing to keep in mind about blogs is that they are primarily a mechanism for drawing your attention to "facts" that are in fact actually presented elsewhere, whether on a full-blown website, a print publication, or as in your case, an email message. People are willing to forgive bloggers who shoot from the hip and sometimes get it wrong if the upside is that the reader more quickly has their attention drawn to the true source of the "real" information.

Welcome to "our" world.

-- Jack Krupansky

"isn't credibility what people's reputations are based on online?"

No, people's online reputations are based on their entertainment value, or their perceived utility. Honesty is essential to the latter, but only marginally relevant to the former. And too context is everything, if you set yourself up as an authority and prove to be a deceptive or dishonest one, well that's neither funny nor useful is it?

'Bloggers' are like open source developers. You should never assume that they are some sort of group, to which you can apply general rules and principles.

Similar to Open Source, though, is the problem of accountability. The question if we want to force, by law, that bloggers uphold some principles, is similar to the question of wether an OS developer should be liable for damages stemming from use of their product.

The solution, I would say, is not in the law, but in trust. We should not simply trust a blogger to be a good journalist. However, if proof of competence is large enough, we can start trusting them, and use what they have to say.

(Now that I think about it, that isn't really much different from how a rational person views any media (or software) company.)

Blogging presents a point of view ~ a perspective ~ not a total picture. Journalism does the same, though with more rules and infrastructure. Journalists are paid, bloggers are not (usually).

The whole point of the "wiki" world of blogging is that it's free from restrictions. Mind you, if bloggers ventures onto journalistic territory ~ by blogging a large corp, for example ~ they must expect to play by the same rules. Overreaching oneself is dangerous in any field.

Congratulations for your cover story and thanks for linking into the event I organised in Paris, too bad you cannot join us, it is going to be fun with 300 people from 20 countries.

WHY NOT THE ACCURATE ONE? According to my opinion, accuracy is very important for blogging as well as for journalism purpose. In spite of he/she telling about his/her thought or just sharing experience, of course, he should tell anything accurately: maybe about the day, time and date, book title, song or movie title, or whatever, which is mentioned in the Blog. The accurate blogging will worthy for himself as well as others.

My brother and I have entered the blog sphere from a different perspective which I think is relevant here. Several years ago we wrote a successful book on kitchen design. While contemplating another book we kept talking about doing a site devoted to the subject but were put off by development costs and trying to sell ads. Then along comes the blog (in our case Typepad) which was perfect for doing a semi-quirky site on the subject (kitchen2020.com) and Google Adsense which populates us with ads. It is an experiment in progress.
One thing we've found is that only certain kinds of subjects lend themselves to the Adsense model and wonky newswatchers are not one of them. You need to reference products with high value that are likely to be researched or purchased on the web. This generates ads with higher value. Otherwise you get a lot of ads for blogging software, etc.
I'd like to see a thread here on the subject of overtly commercial blogs like ours. We keep a theoretical wall between editorial and the types of ads we're seeing but since we're in a product-laden subject matter it can't be perfect.
If this works it wil be the start of another mini-media empire...ha!

Hey Joyce-- Really interesting comments, at least to me. Thanks for sending them along. These are exactly some of the things that I wonder about. For example, exactly to your point, I grabbed the photos on our blog from Flickr because they were open for sharing. But I absolutely hesitated a little bit because of the IP issues.

And I can see how it's easy to shorthand names and titles, which is something you couldn't do for BusinessWeek. I guess you just learn to approach all of this differently, applying lots of triangulation, in terms of facts. It truly is different behavior.

A big timer like Businessweek only start to blog now? Brain dead ...

I just finished reading your article and would like to share my initial thoughts.

When it comes to blogging (and information in general) people tend to coalesce around voices and opinions they agree with. When people say they "trust" a site - opinion has as much to do with it as getting the facts right. I think this will have a profound impact on dialogue - particularly political dialogue. Blogger sites don't have just one person talking, but have a community that agrees with the opinions of the site. These communities tend to buck up each other and begin to push away outside ideas and influences. They are less likely accept compromise and admit that the opposing side has a legitimate opinion. This phenomenon's impact on politics will be huge - as supporters of causes will force agreeing elected officials to reject compromise and move more toward extremes. Can we not see this with the two major political parties now?

Additionally, liars, snake charmers, and extremely credentialed experts all inhabit the net. Something will need to cut through the clutter. I think the growing number of blogs does not diminish the MSM's influence, but will actually increase it. In the short term people will begin to migrate toward sites they trust and agree with. But as the noise increases from greater numbers of bloggers and greater numbers of postings, it will be more and more difficult to cut through the noise and still get to an individual's to-do list for the day. Something will need to track not only the blogsphere but also major events. In reaction, we may see MSM allowing greater ala carte choice for what is news and more specialization when covering industry. Both - ala carte and specialization - will include blogs in news reports. But there will always be a need for a "trusted" news source that can cut through the garbage and cut through the pseudo garbage.

Not knowing the business models, but commenting anyway - Some want to start news services on the web that allow anyone to post news from anywhere in the world. Great idea - but I'm concerned about readers believing these reports as "actual news". Whose doing background checks on authors during breaking news? These sites will be great for telling us where something is happening, but I don't believe they will be good beyond that. We can trust MSM because the HR department is background checking reporters and the checks they have in place prevents false news from being printed. Sometimes these checks fail - ie Jayson Blair - but at least MSM is on the look out for it.

My $.02

Just read thru ur cover story about the blogging phenomenon....was great!

Coincidence or what, am writing my first real marketing paper on the topic of (what else?) blogger behavior. Should it do well and succeed, it should be fun to see how my model's predictions square with reality.

Why is all the hype on PR and Marketing blogs when there is so much more to blogging? We provide enterprise blogging services - Ideascape - that have rich interaction with services like del.icio.us that turns knowledge and idea management as well as open innovation upside down and inside out. Without new products and services, there is really not much for a business to blog about except the same old stuff.

Interesting. I had noticed this statement: "traditional journalistic ethics" and felt compelled to question it, and then I read the first comment which I've copied here:

As for holding bloggers to the same standards and ethics as journalists, would that be a step up or down?

Posted by: Hunter McDaniel at April 22, 2005 05:14 PM

Guess I'm not the only one who puts most journalists on the same level as elected officials and ACLU attorneys.

Bloggers are not journalists, some pretend but a huge percentage just post about their daily lives which can only be understood by the blogger's inner circle of friends.

I agree though that accuracy is fundamental to blogging. Be it a "personal" blog or a blog which attempts to analyze the state of the world. Accuracy makes a blog substantive and engaging. And accuracy should be very visible in one's blog when it comes to linking other web pages where they got their information and images. Plain respect and ethics.

The catch is unless a blog talks about politics, "tutorials" and keeps on "borrowing thoughts" from other sites, then accuracy is not of anyone's concern but the blogger's. One blogs for different reasons anyway.

The good thing about blogging is one is free to read and free to leave and never go back as soon as one decides it's not a good read. And free to sue anyone who steals copyrights. Like what I posted in my blog, let's just enjoy this free (for most of us, it is free) web service until another venue where we can rant and rave evolves.