If the old saw is right and freedom of the press belongs to those who own the presses, then freedom is breaking out everywhere. Nearly everyone owns the Internet Age equivalent of a press – computers with Internet access. The ease of contributing to blogs has made everyone a potential journalist.
The mainstream media isn't heading for the historical scrap yard any time soon, but online media's rise poses some interesting challenges. Foremost is how they're going to continue thriving in a new environment where the news is a back-and-forth exchange instead of a one-way force feeding. The public has developed an appetite for this new way of digesting information, and that genie isn't going back into the bottle. Editor & Publisher's most recent survey validated this, saying more Americans now use the Web than read newspapers.
Combining print journalism's detail with broadcasting's immediacy, online news has eclipsed radio and 24-hour television news channels for reporting breaking news. Bloggers were the rock stars in the last election. Before that, they helped drive CBS News Anchor Dan Rather into retirement in the Bush National Guard memo scandal by exposing the memos as fakes.
Public esteem for the mainstream media is at a historic low. During the Watergate scandal, when media credibility was at its peak, 25-30 percent of the public had a great deal of faith in the media, according to the Harris Poll. Now it's down to 12 percent – ahead of only law firms.
But there's a wild contradiction in bad news that should give the mainstream media hope. Surveys and opinion makers on both sides of the media battle say blogs haven't eclipsed print and broadcast in one crucial area: trust and credibility. For all its faults, they say, the mainstream media contains layers of safeguards and fact checking that blogs and newsgroups lack.
Syndicated columnist Reid Goldsborough, author of the book "Straight Talk About the Information Superhighway," suggests the new media lags behind the old in credibility partly because most online newshounds are part timers who post to news blogs as an avocation. They can't be expected to observe the same quality and reliability standards as someone who depends on reporting to feed their family.
"I'd argue that the old, paid-for media is more reliable than the new, free media. Because professionals are paid, they're accountable," Goldsborough says. "If they fail to fulfill their duties, they're gone. I'd also argue that these failings get such widespread notice because they're relatively rare and because journalism is diligent about policing itself and reporting on abuses. The same can't be said about many other professions."
Blogger Glenn Reynolds of instapundit.com adds that bloggers often feed off mainstream media reports "by providing excellent commentary, analysis and fact-checking." Reynolds also posts the most credible prediction for how old and new media will evolve over the next few years – in a mutually dependent symbiosis. The old media will provide credible foundations in the form of accurate, thoroughly vetted reports. The new media will add value to them through commentary, detail and analysis via blogs and news groups.
As they grow together, will the public believe and trust the old/new media, or will the new media come to be lumped in with the old as an object of public scorn? That's anyone's guess. The media landscape has shifted at its most basic level, says BBC Technology Editor Alfred Hermida, and nothing is automatic anymore.
"The time when people accepted without question a newspaper's or broadcaster's view of the world is on the way out," he said in May 2006. "It is being replaced by a universe in which readers can compare and contrast information, where trust has to be earned."
- Mike McGrail, Director & Senior Writer
