1
1
1
Hartigan, forgetting who he is owned by and who his associates are, accused bloggers and a large number of comment sites of practicing "political extremism and personal vilification" in the midst of offering his own personal vilification of bloggers.
"Like Keating's famous "all tip and no iceberg", it could be said that the blogosphere is all eyeballs and no insight.
As Robert Thomsen of The Wall Street Journal says: "the blogs and comment sites are basically editorial echo chambers rather than centres of
creation"."And their cynicism about so-called traditional media is only matched by their opportunism in exploiting it"
One of the best known comment sites in Australia matches this identikit.
It started as a moralising soapbox; boasting about its lack of standards. Positioned as an underdog, it lectures mainstream media every day.
In the blogosphere, of course, the mainstream media is always found wanting.
It really is time this myth was blown apart.
Blogs and a large number of comment sites specialise in political extremism and personal vilification.
Radical sweeping statements unsubstantiated with evidence are common.
One Australian blogger who shoots first and checks facts later is proud to boast that his site is "Not wrong for long".
Mainstream media understands, most of the time, that comment and opinion is legitimised by evidence.
Opinions, however strongly held, draw their legitimacy from the factual accuracy that underpins them.
Many of these sites and bloggers say their radical new approach is a modern form of participatory democracy.
But as Andrew Keen says, amateur journalism trivialises and corrupts serious debate it degenerates democracy into mob rule and rumour milling.
Most online news and comment sites don't generate enough revenue to pay for good journalism.
