Forbes Attacks the Blogosphere
The current Forbes cover story takes on the blogosphere. In a nutshell: Many bloggers act anonymously and deceitfully, without disclosing all facts, at times defaming individuals.
All of it is true, though Forbes fails to mention that most blogs don't engage in such conduct. If I libel anyone, it's strictly unintentional and--excuse the blame game here--not my fault because I rarely use first-hand information. Rather, I comment on what others have reported.
I would think that's a crucial distinction, but one Forbes doesn't make. To me, a journalist is a person who gathers information first hand and then writes about it. A commentator is a person who writes about that information. Bloggers fall into the latter category, hence I've never agreed with the idea that bloggers are "citizen journalists" or some such thing.
To the extent bloggers claim to go past commentary, they are entering journalism territory. And when they do, they ought to be held to journalism's norms and rules, as Forbes suggests:
Google and other carriers shut down purveyors of child porn, spam and viruses, and they help police track down offenders.So why don't they delete material that defames individuals? Why don't they help victims identify their attackers? Because they are protected by the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which frees a neutral carrier of Internet content from any liability for anything said online.
"Blogging is still in its infancy. Imposing regulations would create a chilling effect," says Annalee Newitz, until recently a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that defends anonymous attackers. The anonymous assault has a long tradition in American political discourse, recognized by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission in 1995 and in a recent decision by the Delaware Supreme Court refusing to force an Internet service provider to disclose who called a small-town politician inept.
But even the Constitution doesn't give a citizen the right to unjustly call his neighbor a child molester. Google and the like argue they bear no more responsibility for content than a phone company does for slander over its wires. But Google's blog business looks less like a phone company and more like a mix of reality TV and an online magazine. Bloggers provide the fare, and Google maintains it for them free of charge, sometimes selling ads.
It's all interesting stuff, and we're going to keep hearing about it for many years.
