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Today Malaysian minister Zainuddin Maidin told local newspapers that they should not quote from blogs or use them as sources because most of them have an agenda. “Do not quote them because you are disgracing yourself as you are the authority. Do not give credit to such anarchist websites.”
Is he right? Are blogs as a form of media inherently biased and “unworthy” of inclusion in the regular world of journalism?
While I agree that a lot of blogs carry a certain bias, and most blogs lack the editorial oversight employed by most traditional publications (fact checking, a nose for news, etc.), to lump them all together under one roof like that is a little short-sighted. Off the top of my head I can think of three reasons a traditional publication would explicitly want to cite a blog as a source.
1. A personal blog lends insight into a story. If a person involved in a story kept a blog, I sure as hell would want to know what was in it. To keep that from the public would be a serious breach of journalistic integrity. Including it as a source would give insight into their motivation and personality.
For examples, serial killer Joseph Edward Duncan kept a very disturbing blog called the Fifth Nail in which he described his fantasies and crimes. Disgraced Japanese businessman Takafumi Horie used his personal blog to proclaim his innocence when he was accused of securities fraud.
2. A business blog announces some new service or product. Google does this all the time and actually forgoes the traditional press release in most cases. Last week the Official Google Blog confirmed that Google was indeed entering the in-game advertising industry with the purchase of a company called AdScape.
3. A news blog is the first one to break a story. Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch is a good example, reporting tech industry news before most other blogs or news outlets even know there’s a story brewing. As far as I know, he was the first one to report that photo sharing service FilmLoop had been sold out by its investors. It’s common courtesy in a traditional publication to name the media outlet or reporter that originally broke the story.
As with all sources, you have to make sure what you read on a blog is true. Blogs have to avoidlibel as much as main stream media, but most of them don’t have the resources to check the facts and make sure everything is accurate. Main stream outlets do.
Zainuddin was upset because Malaysian bloggers accused certain government officials of corruption. Those stories were later picked up by the main stream media. Today’s blogs are like the newspapers of the 19th century. Some deal exclusively in sensationalism, while others are right on the money. Malaysia is a Muslim nation that maintains a fragile compromise between secular and Sharia law. A certain amount of care is required. As a journalist you have to approach a story in a strange blog with a little bit of healthy skepticism, but to dismiss them all with the wave of the hand is simply bad journalism.