In today’s L.A. Times, Norah Vincent’s current column, Putting the Brakes on Blowhard ‘Bloggers’, (intrusive registration required, just use ‘laexaminer’/’laexaminer’) gives an object lesson in what’s wrong with the media class today (an extension of the point I made below).
If the Internet is a frontier, then the online self-publishing phenomenon called Web logging, or “blogging,” is the virtual Wild West where any old varmint with a Web site can shoot his mouth off. A recent decision by the High Court of Australia, however, could civilize the Internet, perhaps to the detriment of the 1st Amendment.
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This wouldn’t matter so much if it meant simply that major media outlets would have to spend more time fending off complaints. After all, they can afford to, although all such costs eventually trickle down to consumers.
But what about pipsqueak bloggers who can’t afford to protect themselves from the umbrageous hordes at home, let alone abroad? The Australian precedent could burden them immeasurably and thus raises the question: Is policing speech in the blogosphere a good and necessary thing or just another way to mum the common man?
Actually, it’s both, which is why there is cause to be heartened and concerned.
We should be concerned because, until recently, the blogosphere has been a haven of free expression.
Though libel law has always applied to Web content, most bloggers have flown beneath the radar, making it possible to disseminate their sometimes injudicious remarks with virtual impunity. And most of the time that has been a good thing because, unlike in the gated confines of print newspapers and magazines whose hand-picked and bowdlerized letters sections abrogate reader feedback, anybody can participate in public debate on the Net. One-man bands such as Instapundit, Kausfiles, andrewsullivan.com and a hundred smaller operations are spicing the debate, keeping the media powers honest and putting our free press through its paces.
But there’s a flip side to this. As much as the blogosphere is full of brave and vital input, it’s also full of the careless, mad and sometimes vengeful ravings of half-wits who will say anything, especially about established journalists and writers, just to attract more attention to their sites. This can get ugly when content is unregulated.
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(emphasis added)
So ranting about average citizens, politicians, or the bad car repairman on the corner is excusable. But if you dare say a word about your betters…watch out.
Overall, I’m frustrated, because she does raise interesting issues about the maturation of blogging, and the increased responsibility that bloggers are struggling toward (as opposed, say, to the typical Usenet political thread participant). As folks who have dealt with me here and in real life know, I’m also a serious believer in ‘civil’ discourse, and in the futility of commentary that consists only of snarky slams.
But if you want to know what’s wrong with Big Media today, you have to look into the eyes of its practitioners and see the insularity. Norah Vincent has given us just such a look, and I want to thank her for it…
(edited for tone)
Well, what poor Norah fails to recognize is that in her quest for fame, she loses quite a bit of libel law protection. When one is a “public figure,” the PF must demonstrate actual malice on the part of the speaker to prevail on a libel law claim — at least in the US. I’ll let the Aussie barristers explain their own stuff.
So I guess my advice to Ms. Vincent, if she’ll listen to the words of Democrats, is: If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Somehow this reminds me of Metallica taking on Napster. (Hey Lars, go grab that tiger by the tail).
For years the left told everybody else, if you don’t like our news, go get your own. Now that time has arrived and the free dissemination of information is the rule, not the exception. Poor Norah finds it objectionable. Well too bad, the cat’s out of the bag, it is now possible to become fully versed and knowledgeable in current events without even touching a mainstream news source.
The internet is the most important development since the printing press, Vincent should get on board or jump in a tar pit so that future generations can admire her like the dinosaur she’s become.
How’s that for unregulated? 🙂
Norah sure has done a fair share of pissing and moaning since she entered the Blogging World.
Is this normal for her?
There is one parallel I draw between the article on guns and freedom and
Norah’s article – both mention responsibility. People can be shot with
words and a bullet. At what point do we become responsible for our
attacks? When someone dies? When someone gets her legs blown off? Or
when someone loses a job because of a malicious and untrue attack by a
string of ever more popular and powerful bloggers?
Also, I don’t understand the principle behind public figure laws. I’m not
a lawyer, don’t want to be, but at what point can I start calling A.L.
nasty names, insinuate rumors, maybe even report that he is a she and not
only that, but a card carrying member of the Morally Righteous Racist
Coallition with impunity, since I will, of course, merely be
reporting the information that has crossed my mind on order to protect
potential readers and to, perhaps, make a few bucks for my future network
and, purely coincidentally, myself?
The public figure laws have always sounded like a pile of dooey to me. I know there’s a reason for them, but it just seems that for the hell that Wayne
Newton was put through as a result of irresponsible journalism he should
own a share of NBC.
Wow, a great dose of Shakespeare followed by quotes by an AUTHENTIC JOURNALIST. I’m not familiar with her work, but I do get the same sense from her tone that I can imagine from those French nobles at Agincourt, gleaming in their polished armor, high above the mud — looking down at yonder English peasant longbowmen and muttering reasurances to themselves that mere feathered sticks wielded by mobs of unwashed commoners could never bring down such grandeur.