With the continuing silence on the Kerry/Cambodia story in the major media – despite an acknowledgement, retraction and revision by his campaign – is there little wonder that “a survey of 10,000 blog readers earlier this year conducted by Blogads found that 61 percent of respondents found blogs to be “more honest” than other media outlets.”
Hodder gives four reasons for trusting bloggers over general- assignment reporters:
Niche expertise. Newspapers try to cover the whole world, while bloggers can be experts with a deep knowledge about a topic like open-source software or micro-biology.
Transparency in motives. Bloggers are upfront about their biases and subjective approach, and they have greater freedom to speak from the heart and use a personal voice. Most journalists are constrained by an institutional objectivity. “I often read a reporter’s story and wonder, what’s their experience? Where are they coming from? What’s the context? What do they really think?” Hodder says.
Transparency in process. Bloggers link to documents, sources and supporting evidence to buttress their own authority. “The top-down press articles I see are written as if they’re not connected to anything, as if they just came out of a vacuum,” she says.
Forthrightness about mistakes. When bloggers err, the credible ones publish a mea culpa and take responsibility, with the corrected information alongside their original posting. Not so with newspapers, whose front-page mistakes are corrected in an inside page, or broadcast news, where mistakes are almost never acknowledged.
Good article.
It would be interesting to know what percentage of links to newspaper and TV/radio network sites are actually provided in the context of demonstrating bias, errors in fact or interpretation or otherwise imperfect journalism by the old media. Also, by that index, which sites would the bloggers rate as the best or most accurate, and which would be worst? I can guess at some of the worst offenders, but it would be nice to see it in black and white.