Saturday, August 12, 2006

Welcome to the Wild, Wild West

The Blogosphere is "a veritable Wild West of verbal ambushes and shootouts, with very little fear of legal recourse to keep character assassination, defamation and dirty business tricks in check." This comment was made by Judge Edward Fadeley of Oregon and his full statement can be found here on the PRNewswire. Know what I say? Well no shit Sherlock.

His statement really doesn't say anything we already knew. Anyone with a little bit of Internet savvy already knows that people are not who they may claim to be. For example I can claim to be an expert on fast food and then I can write something negative about... oh... let's say McDonald's... and since I claim to be an expert on fast food, McDonald's will lose stock value and suffer at my hands because of one bad chicken nugget. Tremble before my wrath you clown! Right... what the fuck ever.

He also called into question the legitimacy of bloggers as journalists. This kind of made me laugh a bit since the whole AP Photo scandal. Really though... in my opinion... bloggers are more like gossip columnists. We speak about what we read or hear and offer our opinions on the matter. True journalists reporting on a news story are not supposed to offer their opinions, just the facts. Whoever said I wasn't going to offer my opinion?

Finally, I would like to point out somewhat of a relatively obvious point... journalists get paid. I think it's safe to say 99% of the bloggers out here do not get paid for their opinions. I think that any legislation meant to curb the nature of this beast should also stop people who in all likelihood don't know how to use a computer from issuing statements that in the end result in absolutely nothing but yet another opinion.

So just out of curiosity should bloggers receive the same benefits as journalists?
Posted by New York City's Watchdog :: 8/12/2006 12:05:00 PM :: Permalink :: 2 Bones Added to the Pile

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