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Don't Fear the BloggerWill somebody please help the Los Angeles Times' David Shaw get a grip?

By Jack Shafer
Posted Monday, March 28, 2005, at 10:34 PM ET
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty

 

In yesterday's (March 27) Los Angeles Times, media reporter and critic David Shaw demonstrates Oscar Wilde's maxim that modern journalism is important—if only because it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

Giving every indication that he's read a lot of stories about bloggers but not that many actual blogs, Shaw disparages the form as the error-filled rants of amateurs in his piece, "Do Bloggers Deserve Basic Journalistic Protections?" It's a "solipsistic, self-aggrandizing journalist-wannabe genre," Shaw writes.

Without naming a specific offender—except Matt Drudge, who he acknowledges really isn't a blogger—Shaw generalizes about bloggers for 1,300 gassy words. He writes:

Many bloggers—not all, perhaps not even most—don't seem to worry much about being accurate. Or fair. They just want to get their opinions—and their "scoops"—out there as fast as they pop into their brains. One of the great advantages of the Internet, many Web lovers have told me, is that it's easy to correct an error there. You can do it instantly, as soon as the error is called to your attention, instead of having to wait until the next day's paper.

These nameless bloggers don't deserve the "same constitutional protections as traditional print and broadcast journalists," Shaw writes. Specifically, he opposes their right to use state shield laws to protect their confidential sources when subpoenaed, as are three bloggers who are facing down Apple Computer in a trade secret case.

What gave Shaw the impression that the law accords print and broadcast journalists the same rights? The "Equal Time Rule" for political candidates requires broadcasters to treat legally qualified candidates the same whenever it sells air time or gives it away (unless a waiver is granted, as in the presidential debates). It must also sell advertising at discount rates to political candidates. No such rules apply to print, which can't be forced to sell ads at all.

Also, until it was repealed 1987, the "Fairness Doctrine" forced all TV and radio broadcasters to present balanced and fair coverage of controversial issues. Again, no such requirement has ever been imposed on print journalists. Whatever First Amendment parity Shaw thinks broadcast journalists enjoy with print journalists, they've had to fight for every step of the way, and many of those "rights" could be legislated away tomorrow.

What compels Shaw to write such slapdash copy? Is he trying to get his opinions out there as fast they pop into his brain?

Further developing his thesis, Shaw finds bloggers inferior to the working press because bloggers "require no journalistic experience. All they need is computer access and the desire to blog." This is an odd stance for Shaw to take: No aspiring journalist has any journalistic experience before he reports and writes his first story. All he needs to gain entry to the profession is access to a keyboard, a desire to be published, and an editor willing to publish his work. Upon that day he becomes a journalist—maybe not a good journalist, but a journalist just the same.

Shaw puts great stock in the fact that mainstream journalism, unlike blog entries, goes "through several filters before a reader sees it." He boasts of how his columns benefit from the vetting of at "least four experienced Times editors," who check it for "accuracy, fairness, grammar, taste and libel." Presumably, his experienced editors aren't hip to the fact that print and broadcast journalism don't have the same First Amendment rights.

According to Shaw, regular journalists strive harder than bloggers for accuracy because of their greater legal exposure. He writes: "If I'm careless—if I am guilty of what the courts call a 'reckless disregard for the truth'—The Times could be sued for libel … and could lose a lot of money." Doesn't Shaw appreciate that Joe Blogger can be sued, too, and that if he loses his case could be forced to forfeit his house, his bank account, his car, and his Fiestaware collection? On the face of it, Joe Blogger would seem to have a greater incentive to avoid libel than Shaw, whose employer will cover his legal bills and take the financial hit in case of a legal judgment.

Shaw defends the mistakes made by mainstream journalists because most publications faithfully correct those errors in subsequent editions. Why is he not similarly forgiving of bloggers, who in my experience are just as likely to do the same? For all the energy he spends on damning error-filled blogs, the only significant gaffe he actually cites is the online assertion that President Bush wore a device under his suit coat through which advisers fed him answers during a presidential debate. And even this is more an unsolved mystery than it is an out-and-out error.

Shaw fails to confront the uncomfortable fact that mainstream journalists make routine errors, even on important stories. In his book Nixon's Shadow, Slate contributor David Greenberg lists a number of press errors made during Watergate—supposedly a high-water mark for the fourth estate—that weren't corrected:

In May 1973, Walter Cronkite opened the CBS Evening News with an item erroneously implicating a Bethesda bank run by Pat Buchanan's brother in Watergate money-laundering. The AP falsely reported that Ehrlichman was present at a key cover-up meeting among Nixon, Haldeman, and Dean. ABC's Sam Donaldson wrongly asserted that James McCord had implicated departed aide Harry Dent in the White House sabotage efforts; Donaldson apologized.

Marvin Kalb's 2001 book, One Scandalous Story, catalogs the errors in the reporting of Monicagate: Both the Wall Street Journal and the Dallas Morning News retracted big stories during the scandal. ABC News' Jackie Judd reported that Lewinsky's had saved a dress with "the president's semen stain on it," then later reported that the FBI had found no forensic evidence on it because it had been dry-cleaned, and then finally reported that, indeed, the president had deposited his love mark on the dress (which was the case).

In the two weeks following Sept. 11, the press made these goofs: CNN relied on unnamed law-enforcement sources to name Adnan Bukhari a hijacker. He wasn't. The Boston Globe identified one Abdulrahman Alomari as another. Wrong Alomari. CBS aired a report of a van filled with explosives on the George Washington Bridge. Didn't happen. As the towers collapsed, CNN aired the raw report of a car bomb exploding at the State Department. "We are working to confirm," said the talking head. Whoops. And so on.

The point here isn't that the established press was reckless, but that the practice of journalism is an imperfect affair. Any journalist who throws rocks at bloggers should pick his targets carefully and expect a volley in return.

By piece's end, Shaw concludes that the protections afforded by the state shield laws to the established press are too precious to waste on bloggers. He writes:

If the courts allow every Tom, Dick and Matt who wants to call himself a journalist to invoke the privilege to protect confidential sources, the public will become even less trusting than it already is of all journalists.

That would ultimately damage society as much as it would the media.

Shaw seems to believe that the First Amendment and its subsidiary protections belong to the credentialed employees of the established corporate press and not to the great unwashed. I suggest that he—or one of the four experienced editors who touched his copy—research the history of the First Amendment. They'll learn that the Founders wrote it precisely to protect Tom, Dick, and Matt and the wide-eyed pamphleteers and the partisan press of the time. The professional press, which Shaw believes so essential in protecting society, didn't even exist until the late 19th century.

If blogs err, Shaw has my permission to shame them. If they libel him, he has my blessing to sue. I suspect that the more he treats blogs like the press the more he will come to realize that they are the press, and that the petty attempt he's made with his column to commandeer the First Amendment for the corporate media will only wreak the damage to society and the press that he so fears.

[Addendum, 4/1: As it turns out, I wasn't done with Shaw. See "Chico and the Man."]

*******

If I were in the business of licensing journalists, which I'm not, I'd give Shaw a two-week suspension without pay and force him to blog his way back into his readers' good graces. Send your alternative sentence for Shaw to . (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

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Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large.
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty
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