Just this week I talked with an editor friend who has recently added blogging to his publications. In a casual conversation about the new venture, we began to discuss the types of conversations taking place through blogging and he expressed to me his excitement in this new venture. As we talked further, he told me recently he had attended a trade show seminar where a heated conversation had broken out over some very misleading facts. The person stating them truly believed what he was saying was the truth; however it was very bogus information.
Our conversation then shifted again and we began to discuss how many people are reading bogus information from blogs or other online sources and because they are seeing the information in print, they are taking it to be the gospel. This untrue, misguiding information is becoming a huge problem of being able to trust the information we find on the Internet.
In an online article Creator of web warns of fraudsters and cheaters (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/nov/03/news.newmedia). Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who founded the web in the early 1990s, says “if the internet is left to develop unchecked, "bad phenomena" will erode its usefulness.” He warns that "there is a great danger that it becomes a place where untruths start to spread more than truths, or it becomes a place which becomes increasingly unfair in some way". He singles out the rise of blogging as one of the most difficult areas for the continuing development of the web, because of the risks associated with inaccurate, defamatory and uncheckable information.
In another article Which reporting can we trust? (http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting/archives/2005/09/sitting_around.html) the article discusses how it is the responsibility of the reporter to verify the information before use. The article states “With bloggers, our circle of contacts grows exponentially, and we have to sort out what to believe. The world doesn’t put information into neat boxes for us. Each one of us is an editor. It’s up to us to divide the information we come across into three piles: I’ve heard, I believe, I know.” This is the bottom line for trusting information in blogs – it is up to us to know it is factual before thinking or saying that it is so.
Sources:
Business Week (2005). Which reporting can we trust? Retrieved online February 10, `2008 from http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting/archives/2005/09/sitti ng_around.html
The Guardian (2006). Creator of web warns of fraudsters and cheats. Retrieved online February 10, 2008 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/nov/03/news.newmedia
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