Last week, I wrote about my objections to webloggers being regarded as “the press”. My post was interesting, I hope, but the comments were fascinating (by which device I commend you thither).
But wait. There’s more. An important reason not to regard — or to affect to regard — webloggers as “the press,” is simply that the transparency of weblogging entails a vigilant oversight of “the press.” They don’t link. We do. There can be valid reasons for not linking — technologically impossible or ossification of writing habits. But again and again mainstream media figures are exposed as having taken tendentious positions, attempting to take advantage of the audience’s relative ignorance. James Taranto has made a career of exposing the self-destructive biases of The New York Times.
Occasionally, a deceptive weblogger will be exposed in the same way — but that’s the point. We live in a world where we expect every assertion of fact to be checked and challenged. For too long they (not all of them, but the worst of them), have lived in a world where they expected to be taken on faith — and where that faith was easily abused. They will be much improved, in time, by mastering our virtues. We have nothing to gain — and everything to lose — by enmiring our reputations in their vices.
And it is important to make the distinction between viewpoint and bias. A point of view is common — all but ubiquitous — among weblogs. We are not all about opinion, as is sometimes charged, but a weblogger’s opinions are never very far from his keyboard — nor should they be. By contrast, bias or tendency is an attempt to sway by underhanded means — by deliberately quoting out of context, for example, or deliberately ignoring a contrary point of view. Ideologues of all stripes shriek about bias in the mainstream media because the mainstream media loudly proclaims itself to be without tendency. It is very easy to discount for a point of view. It is virtually impossibly properly to weigh the influence of a hidden bias.
And still more: There can be a clubishness to “the press” that I think is dangerous to good weblogging. It might only be a club of their own, or it might extend to the people they cover as well. Either way, familiarity might not breed contempt, but it surely breeds favor. If you’re an ordinary Joe but you want a glowing obituary, get a job as a reporter. Drink, swear and beat your wife, it’s all forgiven on Judgement Day. Similarly, if I could not get my writing into the paper without kissing up to Glenn Kelman — thus to cajole from him a daily soundbite — what value should you put on my Redfin coverage?
And more: Once I saw Katie Couric talking about S.W.A.G. No, not the wages of piracy. The word is an acronym, she said, for Stuff We All Get. She meant the goodies you get for doing any sort of well-funded media event, from free food and drink to gift bags full of very expensive merchandise. Do not confuse yourself: These are bribes. They may not elicit favorable coverage, but this is why they are tendered. And, while you might not be swayed to a state of perpetual fawning, even so, if half your Chivas Regal supply comes from other people’s bottles, can you be sure you are being as critical as you otherwise might be? If you know for sure that your invitations to S.W.A.G.-enriched events would stop if you were to be as critical as you might be, could this affect your coverage?
(As a matter of disclosure, I have been offered a complimentary ticket and hotel room to Inman Connect this summer. I’m scheduled to speak, so I can argue to myself that this is an honorarium, but that feels like a rationalization. At the same time, I do feel that Caesar’s Wife should be free from even the hint of a suspicion. Lucky me, I don’t have to decide what to do yet.) [Follow-up: I ended up taking a pass on this. –GSS]
If “the press” were scrupulously honest, there would be no weblogging. If Dan Rather had put mere truth before his vision of The Important Truths, he’d still have a job — and so would Katie Couric, for that matter. Our job , among many others, is to keep a close eye on them. If webloggers are “the press” — or if they are inducted, even if just in pantomime, into the Club of S.W.A.G. — that protection of mere truth will have been weakened.
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