Do blogging and journalism mix?

Journalists are accountable to the public. They have a covenant with their audience. Their main currencies are accuracy and fairness. I don’t think these should apply to bloggers who use such a loose, free-wheeling medium that has great potential for misuse. Bloggers are generally only accountable to themselves. The discipline in blogging is different from journalism. Bloggers can be, and are allowed to be, whimsical. Journalists are involved in a fact-checking process that should have no room for whimsy. Bloggers can be trigger-happy because the medium tempts the undisciplined to shoot his mouth off. We expect journalists not to behave like that. Journalists who blog, like me, therefore put themselves in a dilemma: When I blog, do I stop being a journalist? I have been asking myself this question ever since I realized the mistakes I committed in my posts on the Pangandaman case. By blogging about public issues or events – things that I should otherwise be covering as a journalist – I exposed myself to the intellectual and ethical trip-ups that are inherent in blogging. For instance, does my audience distinguish the blogger from the journalist? When I, as a blogger, commit errors, does the distinction still hold so that if my credibility as a blogger suffers, my credibility as a journalist remains intact? By blogging, am I not, though unwittingly, promoting a medium that, because of its great potential for misuse, can in fact damage my journalism? One can argue that the medium is not the problem; it’s how people use it. One can also argue that the mainstream press has always been full of irresponsible reportage and careless commentary way before blogging was invented. But that’s not an argument for journalists to start blogging about public issues – it is an argument against it. The answer to bad journalism is good journalism, not blogging. Blogging is neat if all I blog about is how cute my sons are. But looking back at my blogging output over the years, particularly recently, I see that I had been drawn into a world where it is extremely easy to carelessly regurgitate lies and half-truths, even asinine thought. While blogging provides a venue where I can say whatever I want to say, particularly things that I am not able to say in my journalistic pieces because of the conventions and restrictions of my profession, I now think that it might be impossible to make a distinction between my journalist self and my blogging doppelganger. I can, of course, continue wearing both hats for as long as I could but sooner or later, something’s got to give. Make no mistake: I have always been an opinionated person. Even before some genius coined the word blog, I was already writing commentary and opinion pieces, ignoring the view held by many that reporters should not voice their opinion publicly because it would betray their bias and, as a result, make it difficult for them to do their job as reporters. (This is why you seldom see journalists writing columns. And most of those who did decide to become pundits did so after retiring from the newsroom.) Still, I’d like to think my opinion pieces were grounded on more solid information, on sounder analysis. These views were formed by my own journalistic appreciation of facts, not by some knee-jerk instinct to expose and shame members of a political dynasty allied with a regime that is mired in corruption. But in my rush, fueled by outrage, to make public my opinion about a potentially explosive issue, I threw all caution and good judgment to the wind. I forgot that I was, before anything else, a journalist. It would be a disservice to society if journalists lost sight of who they are and what they do and resort to just whining in their blogs about matters that they should otherwise be investigating. An argument can be made that journalists, because of their training, would be in a better position to blog about public issues and events. Can’t I apply in my blogging the very same discipline I use in my journalism? I certainly can, though it would be mighty difficult, probably even impossible. Blogging, by its very nature, cannot be endowed with the same characteristics that make journalism such an important force in our society -- gate-keeping to filter the irrelevant and verification to root out the lies; an editorial system whose bedrock is the objective processing of data and information. If bloggers adopted these characteristics, well and good. And to their credit, a number of news organizations allow their journalists to blog, although unlike the regular blogger, what these journalists write in their blogs are subject to the same editorial process that their stories go through. And those journalists who blog outside the purview of their editors are cognizant enough of the possible effect blogging has on their journalism that they put disclaimers on their blogs. In other words, many journalists are able to use blogging to improve their journalism. Having said that, however, I don’t think it is wise of journalists to impose their values and their methods on bloggers, and vice versa. It not only seems arrogant – it is pointless. As I’ve said, blogging and journalism are different animals. The best they can do is complement each other. Case in point: the story of Meliton Zamora, the janitor at the University of the Philippines who retired broke because, as a blog earlier said, the student loans he had guaranteed while employed at the university had not been paid by the students and so UP supposedly deducted all those loans from his retirement benefits. While the blog first brought Zamora’s plight to the public, it was not entirely accurate: turns out only one loan had not been paid (5,000 pesos) and the reason he retired penniless was because UP did not pay him the sick leaves that Zamora insists he never availed. But as a result of the blog, the mainstream press got wind of the story and the Inquirer later ran a front-page article about Zamora – and set the record straight. To be sure, other bloggers could correct the error but I doubt if they would spend the same amount of time, energy and resources that the Inquirer had put in writing Zamora’s story. While I am certain that most bloggers do not entertain the notion that what they do can be considered journalism, there are a few but vociferous of them who do, exploiting the sins and shortcomings of the mainstream press to promote themselves as the alternative to mainstream media. I am an advocate of alternative journalism but I am not entirely sold to the idea that “blogging is the new journalism” or that so-called citizen journalists, with blogging as one of their tools, would eventually run journalism out the door. Moreover, these bloggers often insist that old media types resist the advent of new media. That’s nonsense. The reason most mainstream news media in the Philippines are slow to adapt new media is not so much resistance but a failure to fully grasp new media’s potentials and a passivity and complacency born out of the fact that what they do right now seems to still work so they don’t feel compelled to change. It’s an attitude that will change, however, once old media’s bottomline is hit hard by declining print advertising, as we are seeing in the US, or once they see that the domain that they have occupied for decades is being threatened by new media. They will not resist this change simply because they know they cannot win. To insist, therefore, that they are pigheaded has-beens trying to keep the status quo, as if they are a bunch of Luddites, would be to ignore the technological advances journalists have made in newsrooms around the world in the past 75 years. We will soon see, in other words, these old media denizens improving journalism using new media technology, and the public will be the better for it. Because, really, if there’s anybody who’s in the best position right now to use new media to improve journalism, it’s those who are already in the newsrooms, and not some blogger in a pajama trying his shrillest best to carve a niche in a crowded market by turning blogging into a tool for what amounts to nothing but heckling. (Hecklers proliferate in the blogosphere because that’s apparently one way to get noticed.) Think about it: Who do you think runs most of the web-based and multimedia news organizations in the world? Yes, that’s correct: Journalists who earned their spurs in the newsrooms of old media. Still, journalists who blog and who value their profession have no choice, I think, but to navigate the blogging terrain carefully. As I found out in my case, being also a blogger eventually clashed with my values and instincts as a journalist. It’s tough to play by the rules in a game that practically has none. Carlos H. Conde is a journalist based in Manila. He writes for The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune and GlobalPost.com. Several of his work can be viewed here.