The LATimes reports that a WSJ reporter has been placed on "vacation" after a piece of personal email got widely-dissseminated.
The email discussed her opinion that the situation in Iraq is catastrophic and details a bird's-eye view of the lack of reporting on huge numbers of civilian casualties, and a growing cooperative trend among insurgency factions. She speculates that Iraq will now be a long-term terrorism threat far greater than we are being told.
Information is now so free that we can more readily question the idea of "unbiased" journalism and we should. Reporters have opinions and they share them with their friends. Do they give up their rights to have opinions when they become jouralists? I think that no, they don't.
Traditional journalism outlets are struggling to hold onto the idea of presenting information that is "unbiased" even though we as people are universally bias-ridden by nature. Our news organizations are biased by nature because they are full of universally bias-ridden humans. Robots do not write the news.
Fox News calls themselves "fair and balanced" and the laugh is heard around the world. Those who choose them for an information source and those who stay away from them make those choices because they know the lens through which Fox News reports the world. I think it FAR more responsible for journalism to define that lens than to claim it doesn't exist.
Bloggers believe that it is better to put one's bias on the table and allow readers to view the product accordingly. That seems like FAR more responsible journalism to me than trying to pretend that your reporters, who have access to far much more raw information that we media consumers, have no views.
This articleOJR article: Participatory Journalism Puts the Reader in the Driver's Seat discusses the change in the role of Journalism due to the ease of information flow from ordinary citizens.
The article talks about the Santa Fe New Mexican's foray into online journalism and their interest in furthering their interactive news. They also talk about the upcoming Presidential Campaign site that will cover the election in new ways.
I think the state of journalism today, bloated with groveling organizations more interested in making money and retaining access then in telling the truth, illustrates quite nicely why citizen participation in the "news" process can only help.
The article Blogs in the Workplace discusses the increasing use of K-logs (knowledge logs) in business intranets, for everything from project management to email alleviation to employee morale.
Observation: many, many students will be using blogs or something blog-like in their business lives, but right now they aren't being prepared for that kind of writing.
What is a 'journalist' who is sheparded around by the military and told where and where not to be and what and what not to say? Sounds more like "war tourist" to me. These are the embedded journalists, and in my opinion they set a dangerous precedent for denial of the free press. Other people think this is the journalistic equivalent of microcontent and that, ultimately, the aggregate of embedded journalist's reports will reveal a clearer picture of the result. Some journalists like Robert Fisk prefer to take their chances and report free of restriction. There are also military bloggers who report their own observations from the front lines. Sometimes these reports vary greatly from what mainstream media is telling us.
I've found it difficult to post for the past few days. I find myself facinated with the elements of war coverage, from media coverage versus blogging coverage to foreign coverage, all interesting stuff.
So far, I've only seen one non-american blogger in Iraq, "Salam" writes "Where is Raed." He's been blogging as time and power allows, and his existance has sparked debate over whether or not he is real. His coverage is facinating.
You can view many warblogs (a genre unto themselves) together in the warblogger aggregator.
The coverage is so varied, from media outlets giving supervised coverage via the "imbedded reporters" (via cyberjournalist.net) to some soldier-dude changing his name to Optimus Prime (yes, like the transformer).
Blogs seem to be making public the very personal quest to come to terms with what is happening in the world now. For some people, that means punditry and commentary, for others it means inquiry into the various rumors and stories that swirl around the world. For still others, it means doing everything possible to forget about what is going on right now.
For me, I'm all about the forgetting.
(warning: blatent opinion follows)
The emporer of America has chosen to bankrupt our country and send an invading army to occupy a mostly obsolete country that couldn't do anything to us if it wanted. And we foot the bill for his games. And we will be paying for it for a long time to come; spiritually, diplomatically, fiscally. Suddenly America, who once stood for freedom, is the red-white-and blue menace. Thanks dubya.
I feel a little better now. But only a little.