I've written about this subject many times but it cannot be repeated enough. The population of people who regularly use the internet can be divided into two categories - those who read/write blogs and those who do not. If you are reading this, clearly you fall into the first category.
Frankly any of us who have come to love reading/writing blogs often fail to pause exactly why they are so attractive - or important - and it is my intention to explore that very question today.
Having been an avid reader for years, I'd say that the primary reasons why people read/write blogs are:
- News or stories you can't get anywhere else because the content is more focused (i.e. on a specific topic of interest)
- News or stories you can't get anywhere else because the information is either unavailable or minimal from commercial sources
- Being able to participate in the content, either by writing stories and/or by commenting, which builds the sense of community
- The "local" flavor of getting to know the writers/authors, making the content much more personal and therefore intimate
- The "on demand" nature of blogs, wherein the content is available at any time from any computer
All five of the above explain the appeal of blogging, but what I want to focus on is the importance of blogging and to do that we need to look at blogging's cousin: the commercial media.
At the most fundamental level, the difference between blogging and the commercial media is that the latter consists of a business which disperses/organizes/collects information for profit. There are of course blogs and bloggers which generate a profit, blending the line between the two, but the commercial media's definition is that of a business whose prime reason for existence is to make a financial profit.
Oddly enough, this wasn't always true. One of the most respected and famous journalists of all time, Edward R. Murrow, spent his entire career with the CBS corporation. During the majority of that long career, CBS' news division was operated at a loss - costing the corporation more to produce than it brought in from advertisements. CBS however was a business and its parent company (Viacom) now operates its news division just as any other business - for profit.
This isn't anything new or surprising, but it's worth remembering. All commercial media, whether television, radio or print, is designed to sell advertising. The way to sell advertising is to attract the interest of enough viewers/readers so that the advertisers will pay to broadcast/print their commercial messages. This means quite logically that the primary goal of the commercial media is to attract viewers/readers and is NOT to promote the truth, report objectively or do investigative research. Those three things are byproducts of the quest to attract viewers/readers.
That's quite an important distinction. In a world where Jerry Springer type talk shows, wild/zany stunt shows, prank shows and seances with dead relatives attract audiences, the commercial media knows that viewers/readers are attracted by a variety of means besides promoting the truth, reporting objectively or doing investigative research. Probably the singlest most influential individual in the commercial media, Rupert Murdoch, understood that audience viewership/readership was more readily gained by introducing sensationalist elements into his media companies' broadcasts/newspapers.
Murdoch's model works - that is, it sells more advertising to larger audiences - and has led to the rise of what some people call infotainment, a combination of the words "information" and "entertainment". A quick look at most commercial media sources, even traditionally more "objective" ones such as the Wall Street Journal, show a marked increase in the number of stories that are reported/written simply because they are entertaining, whether it's a dog wedding or the misadventures of a celebrity. Commercial media writers (Judith Miller) or news reporters (Katie Couric) are in and of themselves celebrities, further blurring the line between information and entertainment.
Not every commercial media broadcast/print has to be of extremely serious or objective news reporting - there are plenty of tabloid papers and celebrity-driven television channels to meet anyone's needs in that department. The problem comes however when someone, you or I, wants to be given information (news) that is based on promoting the truth, reporting objectively and founded on investigative research. The instances of these in the mass commercial media are becoming fewer and fewer. Again this is because the larger the commercial venture, the more profit can be made by selling advertising to the largest possible audience and due to a number of factors, sensationalist infotainment sells the best.
There are other factors at play too. Any corporation has its own self-interest at heart, and broadcasting/printing news stories that are detrimental to itself or its business interest would be quite counterproductive in making a profit as this incident clearly indicates.
Furthermore, the advertisers themselves will often censure content by refusing to sell advertising on shows they do not approve of. This sometimes occurs directly, when a single advertiser is a major sponsor. Other times it happens indirectly, when a group of citizens lobbies an advertiser to withdraw its support for a program/newspaper whose content they find offensive.
And last but not least, the government (in all of its levels) has a direct influence on the commercial media. A large percentage of "news" items come directly from the government which can punish or limit access to commercial sources which do not report in a manner in which it considers favorable - a notable example is Helen Thomas' demotion at presidential press conferences.
Therefore a dedication to promoting the truth, reporting objectively and with a minimum of bias, and in-depth investigative research in the commercial media must take a back seat to:
- Sensationalism and "infotainment", because they bring in better profits through advertising
- Defending the corporation's own self-interest
- Defending the advertisers' interests; and
- Pressure from the government to toe the line
Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman say there are other priorities in operation as well, such as the promotion of ideological ideals such as the denigration of such things as communism or terrorism. Whatever the full list would include, it is plain to see that the commercial media does not and will not rely on promoting the truth, reporting objectively and with a minimum of bias, and conducting in-depth investigative research as a primary source of profits.
Let me put it again even more simply - any commercial news organization will do anything - anything - to make a profit. That includes your "favorite" newspaper or television channel, even if seemingly has a bias that you approve of.
This does not mean that commercial news organization such as CNN or the New York Times are purely purveyors of celebrity gossip or unadulterated government propaganda, it simply means that their priorities do not prevent or forbid regular instances of those stories appearing in their broadcasts/pages. As a very famous and well-known religious book states, no (corporation) can serve two masters, and any business' first master is the almighty dollar (or yen, Euro, franc, etc).
In the days of the Soviet Union (and today in such countries as Saudi Arabia or North Korea) the model was much clearer. The media was not commercial, it did not exist to make a financial profit, but to disseminate the official doctrine of the state. Anything which appeared on the air or in print by the authorized media was reporting approved government propaganda.
Sometimes government-approved media reports were accurate and based on a commitment to the truth, objective and unbiased reporting and in-depth investigative research. But not very often. And so, in the days of the Soviet Union, people began what is known in Russian as the samizdat from the words for "self-publish". A clandestine network of people published novels and news reports that were not available through the government-controlled media.
The commercial media operating in democracies such as the United States broadcast/print news stories wherein profit is the main motivator and this has led to the natural successor of the samizdat - blogs and blogging.
The importance of blogging and bloggers is extremely clear - they fill the gap that neither state-controlled nor profit-motivated news sources adequately cover - reporting news and stories for the sake of reporting the news and stories. When profit and government approval is eliminated, the media that blogging and bloggers produce is done for the sake of the stories themselves. That is absolutely key.
Someone new to blogging might find the world of blogging to be extremely paradoxical as it is filled with extremely biased websites where a harsh form of censorship of stories is routinely practiced, far more restricted in content than the commercial or government-controlled media. Sites such as LGF are adamantly and openly promoting "conservative" American stories while other websites such as DailyKos exist to bolster the American Democratic Party for instance. These however are individual websites while I am referring to bloggers and blogging in the aggregate.
Blogs are simply a tool - allowing an individual or group to "print" stories at little to no cost. And while some websites are commercially viable, the vast majority are not and as was famously reported, there are several million blogs in the English language alone. Every single blog, no matter how obscure, no matter how narrowly focused on a single topic or story, no matter how "weird" or "tinfoil hat", serves a vital purpose because it exists (by and large) to report stories of interest/news for the sake of the news/story itself. That's a philosophical distinction of tremendous importance.
Imagine a citizen of any country in the world, under any political system, at any other time in the planet's history. Whether a serf in the medieval Middle Ages, an average person in modern-day Saudi Arabia, a baron in 16th century England or a cow herder in Argentina, they all share one thing in common - the news is controlled by those with the financial means and/or government approval to produce it. At no other time in history have the people, in their entirety, owned the means to produce the news. Never before. Since the time of Hammurabi in 1700 BCE, the production and dissemination of news was the product of only those with the financial means and government approval to do so.
A democracy's strength is based on the participation of its citizens in the decision-making process. What better tool could have ever been invented to further this than blogs and blogging? Every single citizen who reports news, analyzes news, conducts investigations into events and/or reads these stories and news become an active participant in the democratic process.
Anyone who relies on government-approved or profit-based commercial media sources is participating in the democratic process in a passive mode, simply because what is printed in the New York Times or appears on CNN is completely outside your control. The entire focus of the NYT or CNN is for you to read/watch their stories long enough to view the advertisements, not to educate you or invite your participation in their coverage. If you're watching/reading, that's good enough for them.
Blogging offers every single individual a chance to be active, either in contributing stories or comments to an established website or else by creating your own. Often some larger blogs boast about the number of registered users but the only ones who make a difference are those who make blogs an active experience. This can take several different forms, from posting comments to organizing offline activities.
Blogs are therefore of critical importance because:
- They provide stories for the sake of the stories themselves and not for the sake of making a profit or currying favor with the government; and
- The provide a participatory, and therefore active, experience for the visitor
Blogs can make you angry, laugh or feel like you've found an online "home". But it is the above two reasons which explain their vital importance to the democratic experience - the participation of the citizenry in the administration and decision-making process of their country, and indeed the planet.
I realize this has been a rather lengthy discourse on what may seem to be a self-evident topic but I cannot stress its importance enough. It is certainly the prime motivator for my own writing and publications.
I thank you for your time.
Peace