I was driving home from last night listening to a radio journo on NewstalkZB reporting on the Graham Capill case. He was doing an opinion piece and mentioned that he’d gone “into cyberspace” and that people were commenting on the case.
What was interesting was that he said there were lots of comments and that some were from Christian groups and that others were based on media reports.
Y’reckon mate? What else would they be based on. In this context there are 2 types of people
- Investigative Journalists who dig deep, ask people for information and ensure they are in the right place at the right time to get the story. Journalists with a focus on factual information, not sensational or opinionated; and
- Everyone else who has an opinion they share with a neighbour, on talkback radio or on a blog
There’s little difference, really, between a blogger and any other gossip in town. Most of us are giving an opinion. Some of us have more credibility on particular subjects. Others have less. And normally we’re running on less than perfect information. The media choose what they tell us, they can’t tell us everything – they don’t have the column inches to spare – and they may not know what we “need” to know.
There’s alot of hysteria in the media about the rise of the blogger removing the need for traditional news sources. What bollocks. We’ll always need them, the method of delivery might change but we need the specialist, the person who spends their time finding the news and presenting it to us. We don’t have time to do that. We need the media.
The media need to relax and believe that we need them, but that we also need to rant when things are wrong, and bring to bear our disapproval or approval.
Here’s an interesting article: How to Write a Better Weblog from Alistapart.
[…] I’ve written here about the Graham Capill case, the double standards and the media reaction to bloggers. But wait! there’s more: Bloggers warned about law in Capill case. […]