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03/20/05 09:57:54 pm
Back in the basement... with another entry in the journal of Walter the Frankenstein monster.
Sure, it's almost spring. In fact, it's tomorrow. Still, it is cold as ever down here. The furnace isn't doing so well lately and I'm wearing my coat to stay warm while sitting here. I ran into a guy at a bar last night. Turns out that he works as a freelance journalist for a local paper. Of course I can't tell you which one. First, I wouldn't want to get the guy in trouble. Secondly, and more importantly, I hadn't paid much attention to that detail and the beer kind of washed it away before I could even think of retaining it.
The point is while we were talking, we were discussing news sources and journalism in general. He made a comment regarding the numerous “news-blogs” out there on the Internet (sorry, I know it is now en vogue, but I still cannot bring myself to spell Internet in all lower case). Basically, his comment was one of slight annoyance at the “news-blogs”. People read them and take them for fact, but the people writing the blogs could, and do, make up whatever it is that they want to print.
Now, I can't take his side here, nor can I totally refute him. There is no disputing that bloggers have played a role in the changing face of journalism in the last few years, and will continue to do so. In a real sense, there are a lot of bloggers out there that are sincere in their writing/publishing of stories that are as researched and unbiased as possible. These people take their credibility seriously and really care about presenting accurate information.
Then again... there are a lot of sites and bloggers that have no care if what they are printing is accurate. They are opinion-based blogs; they are not there to report but to give a voice to the blogger, a place to sound off on the chose topic.
The problem is that many of the average readers out there may not know the difference. Honestly, who the hell has the time to research each and every news resource. Shit, isn't that point of the news? To provide us with information since most people don't have enough time to research everything there is to know. Of course, we have to be wary to some extent, we always have.