Are Blogs a Problem in New Media? Or the Writers?

Can we believe a blogger over a journalist? That is the very essence of the question that Mike Klassen asks in two opinion pieces on the merits of blogging as a form of journalism. The question arose from an award given to the Vancouver Observer. The Canadian Journalism Foundation awarded the publication with its highest honor – the Excellence in Journalism award.

Klassen's opinions dissect whether blogs can be viewed as real journalism. He criticized CJF for missing an important fact –that the Vancouver Observer is linked to a political organization currently in power. He claims that journalists who follow the credo of giving news impartially are finding CJF's honor “a bitter pill.”

The opinions Klassen writes are interesting. He does give good insight into the checks and balances that journalists strive for in print and online media. What is odd about the articles he writes is that he feels it is okay to criticize CJF and the Vancouver Observer for violating journalism standards, yet he doesn't hold his own writing online, at least in the case of the two linked opinions, to the same standards.

Through out his pieces he uses anonymous sources and attempts to claim their quotes as fact. Anonymous sources cannot be verified. Klassen violates these two basic tests of impartiality in his pieces. Since most journalists or as I am, journalism majors, will pick up on this he attempts to justify his article by stating he runs blogs but that it isn't considered to be journalism.

“That's because, while we are aware of the their influence and consider it our responsibility to ensure accuracy in our content, we are not bound by a requirement to be objective,” he writes.

Two paragraphs later in “Blogs are not the New Journalism” he says that bloggers are a threat to reliable journalism. The threat is not from blogs. Nor is the threat from journalism. The threat comes from the writers. Klassen's opinion could have held more credibility if he had followed his own message.

Bloggers that give off the appearance of legitimate media but don't meet journalistic practices are the real threat to the practice of journalism online whether it be via a blog or a website. All writers who address the news (opinions) and/or write the news should hold themselves to high ethical standards to produce quality pieces worthy of the title “Journalism”.