The Cunctator wrote:
On 11/28/06, Tony Jacobs <gtjacobs(a)hotmail.com>
wrote:
Of those that were independent, they fell into
three classes: some made
only
a passing mention of GNAA, some were articles where GNAA was only
mentioned
in the message board responses at the bottom, and those that were
actually
*about* GNAA were blogs (there were one or two of those). We use plenty
of
internet sources (not the least of which is IMDb, and I've seen
plenty of
citations to online mags like Salon and Slate), but blogs have been
deemed
below the threshhold.
Which is ridiculous, because blogs are a medium, not a particular source.
Banning all blogs as sources is absurd. A much better policy, one which
respects the reader rather than treating him like a child, is to
source the
articles properly. If the source is a blog, the reader can supply his
judgment in how much credence to give the source. Similarly with say, the
New York Times, CNN, or the Washington Times, or Pravda.
The reader can only supply judgment about the credibility of a source if
there is some information upon which to exercise that judgment. The
reason blogs get singled out as a category is not because they cannot
ever be useful sources, but because so few of them provide the
information a reader would need to decide how it stacks up against other
sources. (I assume that the reader won't make the decision based on the
fact that it's a blog, since as you rightly point out, that's only a
label for the medium in general.)
For example, the existence of independent sources is essential, both to
maintain a neutral presentation and to avoid gullibly repeating
falsehoods. But when you have a blog of unknown provenance, it's
impossible to know whether it qualifies as independent (Wal-Mart Across
America, anyone?). At some point, editorial judgment requires that
certain material should be rejected when offered as a source, and if
that's all the material available on a particular subject, then we have
to decline to write about it.
--Michael Snow