Professional Blogging

I was reading somewhere, I've done so much reading to "catch up" over the last couple of days, I've forgotten where I read this, that bloggers should have to follow the same rules that journalists do.

There is a big difference between what I do here in My Little Corner and what a journalist does. I write for my own mental health and because I can. A journalist usually has a degree in some from of journalism or communications, and they do it for a living. A journalist is paid for what he or she writes. It makes no difference whether the journalist is writing an opinion piece for a column, doing investigative journalism, reporting on a local bank robbery, or a story about what happened at the mayor's wife's garden party last Sunday. It doesn't make a difference whether it's for a newspaper or broadcast news .

When you are paid for writing, you are expected to be factual and honest in your reporting. This is a job and your reputation rides on your honesty and reportage of what happened. If you have ties or a bias to a story you are doing, you are expected to disclose those ties, or keep your bias in check until the story is written. Had I written that I had memos about Bush's National Guard Service, no one would have paid attention. Dan Rather however, is a professional journalist. He is paid to report on the news. Unfortunately, his bias got in the way.

I am a blogger, not a professional journalist, news reporter or anything of the sort. I don't get paid for writing anything. I usually don't offer an opinion on something until I've read several different sites, news and blogs, on a topic, or I've done my own research, such as on The Fair Tax Act. The only payment I receive is when a reader says, "you really made me think about that" or "that was a really great piece you wrote on (insert topic)" or "I really like what you write and I've bookmarked your site" or when I look at my stats. My ego gets fed. It really jumps when someone says they've bookmarked me or blog-rolled me.

Reporters and journalists, people on whom other people rely to tell them the facts have to, or should, disclose personal information as it relates to a story. If Neil Cavuto on Fox reports on Nextel, he should disclose that he owns (or doesn't own) Nextel. I don't have to tell my readers jack about me if I don't choose to. I disclose what personal information I do so that you will get the idea that I have personal experience with this topic and know something of what I write. Again, the truth thing.

Bloggers do develop reputations. If we want readers to continue reading our blogs, and feeding our egos, we have to be as honest and ethical as possible. I don't want people, even people I will never meet, thinking I'm a liar. You may not agree with what I have to say, you may think I'm stupid, uneducated, ill-informed, and that I'm an in-bred mouth breather, but I don't want you to think that I lie. Many blogs are written to give information that the main stream media fails to report on. Most blogs are written to post an opinion or vent on that information. Most blogs are written for the fun and entertainment of the blogger. My livelyhood does not depend on what my readers think of me; a journalist's does.

There may come a time in the future that bloggers will be held to the same standards that professional journalists are. We may have to disclose our sources and we may have to vet our facts with three independent sources before we can publish our blogs. We may have to disclose that our second cousin's son works for Halliburton if we are writing about Bush or Cheney. I hope that never happens. If we bloggers are held to the same journalistic standards that journalists and reporters are held to, the Internet will develope into something else and will not be fun anymore. Blogs will be reduced to being a place to swap recipes and maybe the recipes will have to be tested before being published.