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Accountability is a Reader's Choice, Too

ABC News The War on the Web: The opportunity to offer information from the ground is also hindered by a lack of accountability.

When The New York Times makes a mistake, there are more than enough critics to ensure that the newspaper takes action against the offenders and reworks its policies to ensure more accuracy.

When an anonymous blogger espouses his view of a situation from the ground, or posts a piece of video, there’s no one to hold accountable and therefore no way to ensure that what’s being viewed is accurate or fair.

Several misunderstandings are contained in this piece. First, the NYT doesn’t always “take action” — though it’s gotten much better in that regard in recent years.

Second, there’s an assumption that bloggers are all anonymous. This is just false. Most bloggers who want to be taken seriously use their own names, and it’s certainly possible to track down the author/owner of a given website.

Third, in a world where mass media is being complemented by masses of media makers, the reader/viewer has new responsibilities, too. Specifically, we are obliged to be more skeptical of the things we don’t have reason to believe at the outset. The anonymous poster or video uploader deserves much less credibility than that media organization (or blogger) standing behind the material.

This shouldn’t be difficult to understand. Yet it is for just about everyone in the traditional media.

1 Comment on “Accountability is a Reader's Choice, Too”

  1. #1 Seth Finkelstein
    on Jul 27th, 2006 at 4:55 pm

    It’s expressed badly, because to express it well requires some unpleasant politics, some of which can’t be said bluntly, exactly because of that politics. But there is a real conflict underlying it, and it’s a disservice to focus on the clumsy way that the descriptions come out.

    Roughly – “Currently, we have a professionized system where various political factions have a mutally interlocking arrangement in order to keep the peace. Some other factions want to destroy this professionalized system and replace it with something much close to a tribal might-makes-right, and the strongest wins. We don’t think the latter is a good way to organize the political world. The would-be faction-warlords think it’s a great way to organize the political world”.