Yeah. Whatever.

Let’s get one thing straight: blogging is NOT journalism, and never will be. That is, not until each individual blogger establishes his own PCIJ.

(Okay, sweeping generalization, but once you take away the few exceptions you’ll find that the bell curve will bear me out.)

I have long found discussions on the distinctions between mainstream media and the blogosphere to be stimulating, as the latter is still a medium that is still evolving in the Philippines, and humorous, especially when the former seems to want to impose apple standards on an what is most definitely an orange. Perhaps it is high time that we distill that we have learned thus far and present the differences between blogging and journalism that make journalism standards inapplicable, as well the similarities that could ensure that both become honest brokers in the traffic of information.

In finding a clear path through this thicket, perhaps we will be able to reassure MSM practitioners that their jobs remain safe (although they will have less reason to pride themselves as the sole “gatekeepers of information” bleh), cut down a bit of hubris on the part of the blogosphere (yes, Dean, we’re all prone to that), and find a modus vivendi between the two.

Heck, we might even find a way to shape policy. Who knows? Blogs may not have yet been able to influence government thinking, but the recent US electoral exercise has demonstrated that blogs shape voter perception.

Let’s begin.

One of the many criticisms mainstream media has leveled against the blogosphere is that blogs do not report stories completely, that blogs generally do not get “the other side” of a story.

It’s not a criticism without basis; however, it is a criticism that merely betrays the lack of understanding of mainstream media practitioners have of the blogosphere.

Consider these concepts:

A broadsheet has X number of writers, Y number of researchers, Z number of legmen to cover a story in depth. How many personnel does a personal blog have to cover a story? Generally, one.

A broadsheet has both online and offline resources (and by this I mean contacts and sources of whom to get data, information, quotes, and whatnot) to cover a story. What are the resources of a blogger to cover a story? Generally, only the online resources, probably only Google and Technorati.

A broadsheet’s staff are paid to do what they do; meaning, if they don’t get their jobs right, they could lose them, and therefore there is the economic impetus to do what they have to do. What is the motivation for a blogger to get a story out? Quite possibly, merely his personal desire for his opinion and his point-of-view of a story to be heard.

The three concepts above show the difference in the manpower, resources, and economic motivation that will definitely put the onus on mainstream media to get it right the first time all the time, and unless some form of parity is found between MSM and the blogosphere, the establishment media cannot call the blogosphere to task.

This does not mean, however, that the blogosphere cannot and does not correct errors of fact. In fact, the blogosphere has what I choose to believe a better method.

Let’s look at the methods of mainstream media first.

The usual methods of handling factual errors in print media are a) publishing an erratum in some more or less unnoticeable section of the layout, and b) publishing a letter to the editor calling out the writer for the story in question.

Note, of course, that the editors will have to make the decision whether or not to publish said erratum or letter, and how much space it will occupy.

Now, in broadcast media, the usual method is to pretend it never happened.

(Seriously, when was the last time you watched a TV news anchor or heard one on the radio admit that his facts were in error? To my way of thinking, the Ed Murrow school of broadcast journalism never made it to our shores.)

In the blogosphere, any contention against the content of a post can be put up by anyone in several, and in comparison to MSM, practically instantaneously. There are two ways of doing this: first, by leaving a comment on the post the reader found factually erroneous; second, by creating his own blog post pointing out the factual errors.

The comments and posts can be as long as the person making the contention wants it to be, the level of detail not up to some editor wishing to redact out of space constraints or whatnot. These methods make the corrections even more fair than they are in comparison to some AME in some office somewhere, as the original story can be viewed side by side against the correction.

Truth wins out, which I think at the end of the day is the value of either MSM or the blogosphere as media of information.

Let’s take off from the concept of comments and counter-posts to another criticism between the two media: the right to reply. Yup, this little thorny issue that mainstream media practitioners had with Congress fairly lately.

See, when someone out there reads, watches or listens to a story (or more likely an opinion piece) on MSM and takes exception to it, there’s very little chance that the full content of his contention will be heard. Now, to cut MSM a little slack, it has to do with the nature of things in MSM — limited number of column inches, limited amount of airtime, both of which are matters of cost.

Will a broadsheet devote the same number of column inches to someone’s disagreement with a published opinion piece? Will a broadcast journalist give up his airtime for another person to speak his disagreement?

Seriously, folks.

This is the advantage of the cyberspace and the blogosphere — the right to reply is inherent to the medium. Anyone who reads a story online has the capability to leave a comment or post something in reply to some opinion made online, and the comment or post made can be as long as the writer wants.

(On another note, since the right to reply, and therefore the concept of “fair comment”, is inherent to the medium, I do not doubt that libel will be a matter later on to be the exclusive province of mainstream media, but that’s an issue for another day.)

Therefore, such criticism of the nature that has been leveled against MSM in so far as the right to reply is concerned, of which MSM has thus far answered rather feebly, has led to some hubris on the part of the blogosphere. Such hubris, I think, is dangerous to some degree.

See, in the war of opinion, there will always be people who will worry a bone to death, even after they themselves have demonstrated how wrong or how stupid they are, by their own posts and comments. Let’s put it this way: Galileo could have had a blog post detailing why he thinks the Earth revolves around the Sun, while the Church’s minions would have scads and scads of blog posts and comments on blog posts saying that the Sun revolves around the Earth.

To the uninitiated, this doesn’t seem to be a problem. However, search engine algorithms being what they are, Galileo’s correct assertion would be buried by all the erroneous ones, as the way it works is that generally an idea supported by a larger number of posts appears on the top of Google and Technorati searches and is often viewed to be true, or at least better.

That’s the inherent weakness of the blogosphere — just because the crowd is bleating so doesn’t make an idea right… but more people are led to believe that it is. Furthermore, that makes the makes the survival of ideas even more Darwinian than it is in mainstream media; it is a simple matter to bury a valid opinion by merely posting and reposting and reposting bullshit ad nauseam an opinion already rejected as invalid.

Such is the nature of the blogosphere. Unlike MSM and its rules and guidelines and whatnot, the only rule that applies (or at least it seems to me) is the law of entropy. Quantum theory applies far more to the blogging psyche than does Newtonian mechanics.

Where does this leave us? I for one have yet to be persuaded by Danny Arao and Luis Teodoro (Arao in a citizen journalism forum he spoke before recently, and Teodoro during a previous high-horse hoohah), both of whom have spoken about journalistic practices and ethics to be imposed on bloggers… more to the point, I fail to see how these MSM practitioners wish to, well, apply accounting techniques to finding a solution set to an equation in non-Euclidean space.

Can it be done? Perhaps. Will it be practical? I don’t think so.

That said, here’s where I think it will leave us:

Mainstream media has and will continue to have its role in disseminating information to society. The blogosphere is unlikely to wipe it out, especially since bloggers, who are by and large ordinary folk, depend on MSM for information.

The blogosphere has yet to evolve into a medium that is predictable, even by we bloggers ourselves. When it does, let me know, so I can check the skies for the approach of four horsemen.

In terms of shaping public opinion, the blogosphere cannot claim for itself that it will live without mainstream media’s information, for bloggers cannot give comment on issues if they are not aware of the issues in the first place. Conversely, if mainstream media practitioners will claim that it can shape public opinion without the input of bloggers, they’ll have to one day get their heads out of the sand to face OhMyNews, Malaysiakini, and the Obama campaign.

The new and the old can coexist — after all, sharks haven’t evolved at the same scale as birds — albeit in the spheres each will function best, naturally. Of course, let’s call each other out when we have to. Such is how we’ll get better at what we do.

Live and let live. ‘Nuff said.

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