May 12, 2004

Bloggers Get Press Credentials? The Boston Globe reports that Jesse Taylor of Pandagon applied for press credentials for the Democratic National Convention. I like Jesse and his blog so I hopes gets his press pass. Jesse will not be welcomed with open arms by the mainstream press if he does.
But this new form of media is colliding with old-hand political structures, such as the House of Representatives Press Gallery, the initial gatekeeper for credential requests. Officials there decided that independent blogs do not fit their standards of "media," and passed their applications down the ladder a rung, to the convention staffs that handle credentials for student and weekly papers.
posted by Sullivan 20 years ago
  • Definite kudos to the DNC if Jesse gets them, and I hope the Republicans will follow suit.
  • The main problem I have with bloggers is they're pretending they're not another form of gatekeeper. They quickly partitioned themselves into "the elite" and "the rest". When's the last time you saw consistent links to unknown bloggers from a popular blog? And are bloggers any more accountable for their mistakes than the traditional press? From what I've seen, they aren't. Instapundit doesn't have an ombudsman, yet he routinely makes errors of fact and either ignores them or insists (because of his ideology) they're not errors. No one is chiding Roger Simon for being a major hypocrite when it comes to his selective use of outrage. Atrios got (rightly) blasted for some insensitive comments, but he never owned up to his own mistakes. During the Iraq invasion, The Agonist plagiarized word-for-word from Stratfor (a subscription intelligence service) but played it down as a mistake on his blog. Meryl Yourish has made a career out of denouncing anti-Semitism but apparently has no problems with generalizing all Catholic clergy as pedophiles. Despite all that, I firmly believe the good outweighs the bad when it comes to blogging. Bloggers have tugged the media into reporting some stories that would have been buried otherwise. But to pretend blogging is some sort of revolution where the power of the media has been put back in the hands of the people is ridiculous. These people are nothing more than talking heads who operate on the internet instead of TV.
  • One problem I see is blurring the line between blogs and conventional media thus making it easier to sue for libel. The ninth circuit court ruled that it blogs can't be sued for reprinting libelious (sp?) statements. It was disscused on the other site But IANAL.
  • I think the bloggers really aren't about practicing journalism. They're more like a distributed network of ombudsmen.
  • I don't recall Atrios' insensitive comments. Can you fill me in?
  • I don't recall Atrios' insensitive comments. Can you fill me in? My fault. I don't follow blogs as much as I used to so I tend to get some of these guys mixed up. It was a Kos post that got his John Kerry blog ads pulled.
  • But do bloggers have the same goals in mind as ombudsmen? I find it hard to believe that they would put journalistic integrity ahead of opinion. Whereas I have generally been very impressed by actual ombudsmen (mostly Toronto Star or Globe and Mail - the ombudsmen collumns are very interesting). They certainly are a new form of media, so press passes make sense. But can they get press passes to parties and movies? That would be worth blogging for :)