The Rivalry

Will Bunch has an idea:

Of course bloggers make mistakes -- with more than 70 million in play, how could they not? And there really are some major ethical issues that need to be hashed out. But why do I suspect that some of the loudest critics of blogs have never actually read one?

That is why I am proposing, to all newspaper editors across this great land, something I call Bunch's Law. From this day forward, no op-eds criticizing bloggers for "often" making mistakes can be published without at least ONE (1) example of said mistake. Hopefully, that will cut down on major op-ed page clutter, and maybe even save some trees in the process.

This will never happen. It serves the traidtional news media interests to tar all bloggers with the same brush of unreliability. Bloggers can fight back and be vigilant and hold blogger's ethics conferences and all the rest, but the reputation will never change. There's an extremely good reason for this.

The news media sees bloggers as the enemy.

Not only in the sense that they are a threat to job security (which is overblown; last I saw, Dan Rather still reports for 60 Minutes and has a syndicated column). They're a threat to market share. The top blogs routinely get more eyeballs than the top cable news programs. Ad revenue in the blogosphere has exploded. Not here, mind you, but look around, I assure you. There is simply no reason for these beseiged media companies, run by conglomerates who want nothing but increased growth, to report honestly on the blogs. It's in their interest to demonize them as dishonest rabble-rousers. And it will never change. This is probably coming from the corporate paymasters more than anyone else.

The truth is that the blogs need the media (unless somebody wants to pay me to fly all over the globe and report on stuff), and vice-versa (unless the major media outlets want to rehire all their fact-checkers). But there will not be many instances where this symbiotic relationship will be allowed to flourish. This will continue to be yet another polarizing battle in our polarizing culture. The media company that embraces and utilizes the blogs best will become the gold standard in news in this century. I'm not holding my breath waiting for that moment.