Blogs will gain credibility by having good policies and a good track record. Yeah, it's probably unrealistic that blogs are going to pay professional journalists to fact check bloggers, but there are other ways for new media sources to increase their value. I'm sure a site will soon exists (if it does not already) that rates blogs somehow, based on whatever criteria it sees fit, just as websites are. Most blogs already have their own rules regarding posts, and while that may limit some speech, it does provide guidelines for worthy posts. Editors of blogs may start to create mission statements and policies like other journalistic forms.

I also agree that bloggers have to check each other. As this resource further develops, I think a standard for which to judge and use posts will also form.

By the way, the time on the CWRL forum hasn't changed for Daylight Savings yet, which is odd.

One blog, called the Annotated New York Times, is a forum specifically for people to comment on NY Times articles. Reading through them, I found a few especially interesting. I think something like this is a happy medium between the two schools of thought: citizens have the agency to have meaningful deliberation (Dewey), but they won't always seek out and discuss the most important issues (Lippman).

http://annotatedtimes.blogrunner.com/snapshot/D/7/5/4363B968053A775D/

Talk about misleading headlines: U.S. Quietly Issues Estimate of Iraqi Civilian Casualties.

Not surprisingly, they did nothing of the sort. What they released was a low estimate of the number of Iraqis killed and wounded by insurgents -- significantly lower even that Iraq Body Count's record of civilian casualties reported in news outlets.

I can't imagine what the purpose of releasing these numbers is. Supposedly they're offered up "as a result of specific questions posed by Congressional staffers during briefings." But they don't seem to provide any information at all. And yet an aide to Senator Leahy says the numbers give Congress "something concrete to ask them about." What? The only question I can think of is, "How in the world did you come up with these meaningless numbers?"

I'd write the release off as p.r., but if the intention is to point to the horror inflicted by insurgents, while trying to maintain our own innocence (and pretend that every Iraqi killed by Americans is a terrorist, including the children), it seems odd to play down the numbers. Very mysterious.

But the most important question comes at the end: Why isn't the military interested in evaluating it's own record? Doesn't it even want to know how good a job it's doing on avoiding civilian casualties?

Jeanne Sunday, October 30 | GO TO WEBLOG | FILED UNDER: Body And Soul - Iraq

After reading this Times article, it was interesting to see what others felt the aricle hadn't talked about.

Ineptitude of the citizens? Oh, because professional journalists are always so apt. As far as I know there has not been a confirmation on the mass baby rapes, widespread murder, or any other of the many horrible horrible things reported after the levees broke.

Or let me take another angle. It doesn't take technology to perpetuate misinformation or ineptitude of citizens. If there weren't blogs, there'd be those irritatingly smug email forwards. If there weren't those email forwards there'd be phone or water cooler conversations. If anything, technology helps alleviate this. I get 1/20th of the forwards I used to get. You receive one, and you go straight to snopes.com to comfirm or debunk it. Then you send it back to the person that sent it to you as well as everyone they sent it to. The more this happens the more you get a sixth sense of what is urban legend and what needs to be investigated because it could actually harm you. This could happen with blogs.

If blogs encourage conversation then at least people will be able to analyze what's on the table, and other information can be thrown in for consideration that may shed light on the quality of information.

Besides, although many blog posts do have an editorial or opinion kind of feel, most do actually link to an actual news article. People still have to go to the news article and think for themselves about the information it presents. They can always fact check anything they're not too sure about.

So, there's probably a ridiculously insane amount of blogs out there, while at the same time a finite amount of so-called 'professional' journalists. They're supposed to regulate whether or not the citizens are pursuing a viable new agenda??? It's a nice ideal, but it kinda falls apart when you get down to nut and bolts. In addition, we have some crazy-assed journalists out there. I would probably read a blog that was monitored by Geraldo Rivera for entertainments sake, but thats it. I don't think that this would work....but maybe I'm missing something.

I tend to agree with Devon that it is not probable that professional journalists will alone be able to keep a check on citizen journalists. I would also agree that, to an extent, citizen journalists are not capable of keeping checks on one another--but I do not think that this means that good citizen journalism is altogether illegit and impossible.

Gillmor makes the case that citizen journalism adds multiple perspectives and often ends up providing profession journalists with a critical, insider angle that they probably would not have access to otherwise. So, I'm gonna go ahead and play the "value of the marketplace of ideas" card on this one. I strongly believe that Gillmor correctly points out the potential of blogs and wikis to create more informed democracy, and he provides many examples to back up his claim. My personal favorites are the one about Ben Chandler winning a special election and the one about the proliferation of Iranian blogs.

Of course, maintaining the ethics of fairness, accuracy, and thouroughness that Gillmor calls for within the broader (non-political) realm of the "blogosphere" will remain a challenge. I ran across an example of the dangers of citizen journalists who do not live up to these standards:

From http://www.opinionbug.com/index.php?p=915:

"Prince Charles thinks America has been too intolerant and confrontational toward Islam:

Telegraph—The Prince of Wales will try to persuade George W Bush and Americans of the merits of Islam this week because he thinks the United States has been too intolerant of the religion since September 11. . . .

Daily headlines about suicide bombings, beheadings, and rapes carried out by Muslim fundamentalists against unbelievers is sufficient evidence for many to raise the red flag. But apparently not so for the prince.

In my opinion, he has been living in his ivory tower too long. His supposition that America is too confrontational toward Islam is simply naive and misguided. I believe his energy would be better spent touring Europe asking why it is so tolerant toward a religious system that aims for its conversion or annihilation.

How do you feel about it?"

From a post on the same topic:
http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2005/10/islam_screams_w.html

Do you think maybe Muslims are trying to tell us something? I'm hearing a subtle message along the lines of "WAKE THE HELL UP! DEFEND CIVILIZATION OR WE WILL DESTROY IT!"

Perhaps a major qualification to citizen journalism is that people will always blog and report through their own bias. It's just a matter of having enough faith that the public will distinguish the types of speech that are biased from what is politically/socially constructive and relevant to them.

I think that, perhaps the largest problem involved with blogging, in relation to Lippmann's concerns would be interpretation of stories that are innaccurate. A lot of what is posted in blogs falls under the editorial categories where the authors are giving opinions of news. If a reader takes interpretation as fact, then they run the danger of misinforming a section of the public. The only blog I really read is burntorangereport.

In a recent post, Jim Dallas, relates tax reform to Granola. claiming it "reeks of seriousness but, in the end, isn't really all that good for you." I am by no means a tax expert, nor am I interested in issues concerning tax reform. So as this is one of the only chances for me to hear about taxation problems, since Dallas only links to a site explaining his argument (a site I have no interest in reading) I am left thinking very little about an issue that, for all I know, could have a large effect on my life.

I think the problem lies in who to believe. If someone posts something incorrect on their blog and then someone makes a comment correcting the mistake, are people going to take that correction seriously? Are people even going to read the comments? I think reporters checking the factuality of blogs is not possible. There are too many citizen journalists and too few professionals with nothing better to do than to help citizens distinguish between good and bad info. I think Lippmann's concerns over people not being good journalists are valid and I believe impossible to counteract. I think eventually people may go to certain sites that have been reliable in the past and thus can build reputation and become more consumed that way but for the most part it is very unlikely that someone will be able to get totally correct info from the average citizen. For example on wikipedia which is an internet encyclopedia made by citizens with supposed factual information, there are still mistakes all the time. I wrote a column on past republican supreme court picks and went to wikipedia for some historical info and dates and found on Owen Robert's info. page that he was appointed by president harding. Later when I was editing my column I fact checked all my info and found roberts to have been actually appointed by president Hoover. I changed my column and edited the wiki site in order to reflect the accurate information. But things like this happen all the time on blogs and elsewhere and not everyone fact-checks.