Mr Eugenides had this today: And they wonder why people don't trust blogs? It's the sheepish yet graceless retraction this morning that makes this funny.
He was referring to the Alex Hilton post, reporting Maggie Thatcher's death. Hilton says he was given dud info by a 'journo friend'. Some friend.
Whether or not Hilton did it just to boost his traffic, [which of course it did - enormously] or whether he made a genuine mistake late at night and didn't check his sources sufficiently, it does bring the blogosphere under severe scrutiny and temporarily relieves the pressure on the MSM.
I'd been planning to write a piece anyway, defending the MSM, but this Hilton biz has already done it for me.
What it also does is make me scrutinize my own posts, for example the very last one, on Diana's death. I'd like to say I scoured 17 articles of all hues before coming out with that and I'm preparing a follow up right now with 10 questions the enquiry needs to answer.
One mustn't make statements unless they can be backed up. I hope that mine can be; I think they can. I suppose when we can't find backup, we're faced with a dilemma.
For example, I certainly had a piece on file, before my computer crash, asking why an 'older' man was seen by one of the orderlies going into the emergency room unaccredited and not wearing surgical clothing and why he was standing at the foot of where Diana lay, speaking some phrases repeatedly, then was not there when the orderly returned.
I had that piece on file but then it and dozens of others on my 'D' disk were lost in the crash, along with all the programmes. Does that mean that this information can then never see the light of day? In the MSM that's so - unless it's double sourced, it doesn't go in.
The Voluntary Code Free Zone banner above is clear enough but now I don't know if we shouldn't at least follow some basic protocols on sourcing. That's if we wish to be taken seriously, that is.
Are you posting for you or 'them'?
ReplyDeleteMake all the comments you want to. If it turns out you are wrong, say so and move on.
That's certainly better than the A(w/t)P does :)
Difficult, this one. I hadn't hear about any of it the MT death report, I mean] till I read your post. The thing about blogging is that it is immediate. Of course we should do our utmost to check sources but let's not beat ourselves up: few of us are professional journalists and so we don't have the fast access to authoritative sources or the clout to get interviews that the msm do. As long as a blogger posts something he / she is not sure of as their opinion and makes that clear, it is fine. You, James, are very good at listing your sources and that's one reason why I, for one, keep coming back to you. And you make it clear when you cannot totally back something up, so that is fine too.
ReplyDeleteEach to their own I think. You make your rules and let him make his. I don't see this as a sort of team game. I write my blog the way I want to and largely for myself. I'm not really arsed if it is taken seriously by other people or not, but I do try and think a little before I write
ReplyDeleteI like your blog because it is well researched and has interesting content. His blog has been interesting in the past, but he's ruined his credibility.
If you want to break a story then get your facts straight.
ReplyDeleteif you want to comment then you have licence to be looser.
That's my approach anyway.
I agree with you completely, James. I read as many sources as I can, related to what I my topic, before writing any post on my blog. It just makes sense to read as much about it as possible before writing on it, and means that I can see any bias in the stories.
ReplyDeleteThat is why at the bottom of most of my posts, I write a "Sources" section, a holdover in a way from uni essay writing. It means that others can read up on the subject.story if they wish to and check what I have said against the facts.
I like the idea of a source selection which Thunderdragon has adopted. However, you can't do that with an anonymous source. This is one reason I always have so many links to my posts. On a story like this, you treble check at least. All of Fleet Street was chasing this story throughout the night, so it shows that blogs get read.
ReplyDeleteNot sure this isn't another example of our tendency to get more than a little self-important and feed an inflated sense of our own importance.
ReplyDeleteAs a medium this is very much in it's infancy and I suspect it'll be unrecognisable in a couple of years...