How Bloggers Are Held Accountable
by Chris Bowers, Mon Dec 18, 2006 at 10:05:41 AM EST
So, Greater Boston posted a "Mea Culpa" to their erroneous (and hilarious) report on the erroneous (and infuriating) New York Times report on the mega bucks we bloggers are pulling down in this new, ultra-lucrative world of political blogging. Good. My parents were relieved to discover that I actually do exist.
For all of the mistakes Greater Boston did fess up to, there was a major theme in their original panel on blogging that they did not address. Namely, like many other established media sources before them, they failed to retract the utterly false notion that there is no accountability in the blogosphere. We have all heard that idea repeated over and over and over again, even though it has about as much basis in reality as the notion that Scott, Matt, Jonathan and I were all actually Jerome. It makes about as much sense that an institution as large as the blogosphere has quickly emerged and continued to function without any internal checks and balances as it does to assume that Jerome was able to produce the full-time blogging load of three people and moonlight for Senator Menendez in addition to his other consulting work for Forward Together PAC. Both premises posit bloggers as inhuman in our capabilities, and are clearly based in about the same amount of anthropological knowledge of the blogosphere as 16th and 17th century Europeans utilized in their most phantasmagoric and otherwise absurd reports on the native peoples of the Americas, Africa, and large parts of Asia.
Anyone who has ever spent any degree of time as a prominent blogger knows full well that there are a lengthy and strict series of accountability norms and mechanisms that political bloggers must obey, or else be ostracized and face irrelevance. Here are just a few of the ways in which bloggers are held accountable:
For all of the mistakes Greater Boston did fess up to, there was a major theme in their original panel on blogging that they did not address. Namely, like many other established media sources before them, they failed to retract the utterly false notion that there is no accountability in the blogosphere. We have all heard that idea repeated over and over and over again, even though it has about as much basis in reality as the notion that Scott, Matt, Jonathan and I were all actually Jerome. It makes about as much sense that an institution as large as the blogosphere has quickly emerged and continued to function without any internal checks and balances as it does to assume that Jerome was able to produce the full-time blogging load of three people and moonlight for Senator Menendez in addition to his other consulting work for Forward Together PAC. Both premises posit bloggers as inhuman in our capabilities, and are clearly based in about the same amount of anthropological knowledge of the blogosphere as 16th and 17th century Europeans utilized in their most phantasmagoric and otherwise absurd reports on the native peoples of the Americas, Africa, and large parts of Asia.
Anyone who has ever spent any degree of time as a prominent blogger knows full well that there are a lengthy and strict series of accountability norms and mechanisms that political bloggers must obey, or else be ostracized and face irrelevance. Here are just a few of the ways in which bloggers are held accountable:
- New Content Accountability. If you want to be a big-time blogger, you have to produce new content at a torrid and relentless rate. Virtually every single highly trafficked political blog posts multiple new articles every day of every week, even on weekends and holidays. I often commiserate about this with Atrios and BooMan, since we are the only professional political bloggers in Philadelphia (I think). As Duncan once said to me "you have to feed the beast," even if it isn't always your best content. As BooMan wrote the other day:How about my critics try to find four stories a day to write about, and have them all be of critical importance and all really well written and thought out? Try doing it every day for almost two years? Then you can get my ear for criticisms of that type.
This sounds like a defense mechanism, but it is not. This constant need for new, interesting content keeps bloggers accountable because it guarantees that only people who are unswervingly dedicated to blogging will be prominent bloggers at any point in time. It also prevents laziness, as you have to be at, or near, the top of your game all the time. If you are a one or two trick pony, it just won't work either. The endless demand for new material keeps your focused, dedicated, and open to new ideas.
- Sourcing accountability. One thing prominent bloggers must do that is not required of television pundits or newspaper columnists is to provide a citation for every contentious claim, every direct quote, or every statistical assertion they make. Granted, the citation method of choice is through hyperlinks to source material, something that is not possible in any other media, but it is required of us none the less. If you make a claim that someone said something, and you either take the claim out of context or fail to provide a hyperlink to the source of the quote, then you will face immediate, negative repercussions from your readers and from other bloggers. Over the past two and a half years, I have suffered the wrath that results from lack of citation on a few occasions, and it is not pleasant. It usually forces me into immediate retractions, revisions and apologies. If you repeatedly make that mistake as a blogger, you will quickly lose a lot of credibility. Sourcing accountability is very real online in a way it just isn't (can't be?) for pundits on television, radio or most print periodicals.
- Authenticity and transparency accountability.The New York Times article that claimed bloggers were shilling for candidates missed a vital aspect of the culture of the blogosphere: people online hate paid shills who do not reveal their funding sources. If any of those bloggers had not made it known beforehand that they were in fact being paid by a given politician, then that person would face long lasting, and severe, repercussions including a massive drop in their readership and incoming hyperlink bases. In fact, if you want to find one good way to destroy your reputation online, start writing about a candidate who is paying you without revealing that you are being paid by that candidate. All of the bloggers whose names I know on the list made said disclosures in a very public way. Too bad the New York Times didn't include those disclosures in their handy little chart.
In a media environment saturated by political spin and manufactured talking points, if your blog lacks a sense of authenticity, and if people suspect you are just trumpeting talking points and not expressing how you actually feel about a given political situation, people will stop reading your blog. Period. Interestingly, I can't remember the last time a major pundit on television, radio or in newspapers disclosed all of their speaking fees, thereby letting their readers know who was funding them. - Small business accountability. Most top political blogs, especially on the progressive side, have gone well beyond the "hobbyist" level, and have become full-fledged small businesses. As such, the free market of the blogosphere functions as a form of accountability on political bloggers. It requires you to produce original content that can't be found anywhere else. It requires you to identify and refine your target audience, and to produce work that will appeal to that audience. It requires you to be innovative with your website design. It requires you to treat your audience with respect, and neither talk down to them nor post content they would find insulting. For example, on MyDD this means things like producing original on-site reporting from campaigns and long-form political analysis (content you can't get anywhere else), focusing on election strategy and political infrastructure (our market niche), and making sure our electoral forecasts are based in realty instead of our hopes and dreams.
As a small business without any institutional support, the potential repercussions for failing to meet these demands are severe, to say the least. At MyDD, we lost 90% of our readership after the 2004 elections when my electoral forecasts were wrong. In 2006, I hit everything almost precisely on the nose, but even then we still never regained all of our pre-2004 audience. If I am wrong, people will stop reading me in favor of people who were right. I have no option but to be correct, unlike, say, David Brooks or other Meet the Press panelists on Iraq.
There is overwhelming accountability in the blogosphere, and if anyone were to live the life of a full-time blogger for even one week then s/he would know that. It just isn't the same sort of accountability traditional journalists working in established news operations have to face. Quite frankly, I think the accountability we face is far more severe. For example, in additions to the reasons I listed above, I have edited and fact checked all 2,700 stories I have produced over the past two and a half years. When I make errors it doesn't take until the next day for someone to point out those errors. It takes about fifteen minutes--and you better believe that keeps me on my toes. In our contemporary era of subjective news punditry, I would like to see anyone who has ever decried the lack of accountability in the political blogosphere live up to these standards before s/he starts talking about the need for another blogger ethics panel or other ways in which we must be held accountable. After all, if there is one ideological point on which everyone in the progressive, political blogosphere agrees, it is the need for a much more transparent and accountable government. We expect no less from other forms of media, and we expect no less of ourselves. Nor should we, because if the progressive movement is not held accountable to itself, ultimately we will fail to achieve all of our goals when it comes transforming government.
Tags: Blogosphere, Media, meta (all tags)
-----------
myDD - skin
-----------
21 Comments