I was mis-somethinged in the paper today — not misquoted or misattributed, exactly, but something like misconstrued, which makes me think both of danah’s post about blogging metaphors and Liz’s post about presenting blogs as diaries vs. blogs as outlets for research.
In an
article on weblogging and politics in today’s NY Times, Tom Zeller, the reporter who wrote the story, has me saying this:
[Shirky] suggests that the online fact-finding machine has come unmoored, and that some bloggers simply “can’t imagine any universe in which a fair count of the votes would result in George Bush being re-elected president.”
I said the part inside the quotes, and it is, in a narrow way, accurate — I have seen a remarkable profusion of posts about the election that assumes that evidence that e-voting errors are part of a theft of the election on a grand scale.*
But the sentiment overall is not something I believe — I am in fact on the record over at PersonalDemocracy.com as saying that the unmasking of the National Guard memos was the most critical event in the use of internet technology in this campaign.
What rubs me wrong is that the quote is framed in a way that makes it about identity, not activity. One way to present this would have been to define an axis of interest: ‘some Democrats “can’t imagine any universe in which a fair count of the votes would result in George Bush being re-elected president.”’ Another would have been to define a relatively neutral category: ‘some writers “can’t imagine any universe in which a fair count of the votes would result in George Bush being re-elected president.”’
Neither of those seems wrong, but the way it’s phrased, I seem to be suggesting that there are bloggers unmoored from the fact-checking pattern because they are bloggers, rather than because they are Democratic partisans who publish their thoughts using weblog tools. And that’s where it goes wrong.
I have long been of the opinion that the word weblog has no crisp meaning anymore, and is going to fade as a defining term for the same reason ‘portal’ did — there are too many patterns to be conveniently contained by one word. But here the nature of weblogging and webloggers is defined, from outside, as not just a category, but an identity.
And that I think, is not just wrong but unfair. So many people have weblogs now that anyone wanting to say anything sweeping and negative about the weblog world — they’re all bored teenagers, they rant instead of writing, they are conspiracy theorist, whatever — can find, in 10 minutes on technorati, a hundred weblogs that support their point of view.
If I had the interview to do over again, I’d say that many of the people who “can’t imagine any universe in which a fair count of the votes would result in George Bush being re-elected president” are blogging about it. Blogging is increasingly an activity rather than an identity, too widespread and various to be pigeonholed, and should be treated as such when peopel are writing about it.
——
- As for my own views, I voted for Kerry and I’m sorry Bush won. I also think e-voting is a disaster. But I don’t think the two are linked — Bush’s majority was too large, and even if Kerry could win the electoral college with a reversal in Ohio or Florida, he still lost the popular vote. I thought it was rotten to have a popular win and an electoral loss in 2000, and I still hold that principle.
1. Dan Phiffer on November 13, 2004 1:33 AM writes...
I think this post illustrates the sort of self-correcting potential in blogging compared to the traditional media. Sure, there are letters to the editor, but those are filtered and given unequal footing relative to the article in question.
Permalink to Comment2. ctob on November 14, 2004 6:00 PM writes...
In my view there are currently two major problems with the big media outlets.
1) stupidity/foolishness
2) extreme bias ( this bias is currently mostly left but that is just happenstance ) cloaked in false objectivism.
I actually wouldn't have that much of a problem with #2 if they were honest about it, but their pretenses towards objectivity is harmful imho.
#1 though is a problem that the press has always had and probably always will have. And is something that is not limited to the press. Although I would argue it is most prevalent in the press. The thing about blogs is that they allow something akin to the peer review of (well-done)science. In science the reproducability of an experiment and the examination of your expierments methodology by others is a key aspect of its findings being accepted. Similarly if a large majority of non-silly blogs can find very little wrong with a piece of journalism it says soemthing good about that piece .
The miscontruing/misquoting of the press is a longstanding complaint of many people who have had some dealings with the press. Imagine if this story had been published in a blog like format and Shirky was able to post a trackback to this post here. I think it would be a quite different dynamic. And maybe, hopefully reduce the phenomenon so prevalent in the press these days of simplistically organizing people is neat little groups.
The simplification of things is something I think ties in neatly to the bias issue. Its much easier for them to disregard or regard someone who falls into their predefined groups of bad/crazy people or good/reliable people. I believe that this prejudicial mindset is part of human nature and not always bad in that it may help in quick decisions, but for things such as journalism that should be fairly well thought out it is can be very misleading. This is what accounts for the idea of the liberal cocoon of the major media outlets. Its a cocoon because everyone at say NYT share similar definitions for their various prejudicial groups causing the reinforcing of these defintions as fact rather than opinion.
The interesting thing about blogs is that they can be something more akin to a slow discusssion or argument, whatever. Rather than a sermon. I think this phenomenon is well illustrated in a conflict between TalkLeft and Patterico recently over a post about the Secret Service. No issues were actually solved between the two of them, but for anyone who cared to follow the conflict a better exposition of the various sides occurred. I'm sure TalkLeft probably thinks Patterico is some sort of facist and Patterico probably thinks TalkLeft is a Loony Left Liberal, but for the readers the issues are not, in the totality, existing in some sort of vacuum presented by doctrinaires. Granted those who write their blogs can control what goes on their blogs, as happened in this exchange. But for those who care to examine the matter it is fairly easy to find the other side. I think alot of people, who aren't just partisans, try to find other information. And those who do act rather draconian towards feedback are often not taken very seriously.
Permalink to Comment3. Matthew Gertner on November 15, 2004 4:24 AM writes...
Misrepresented?
Permalink to Comment4. Jason on November 18, 2004 8:00 AM writes...
"What rubs me wrong is that the quote is framed in a way that makes it about identity, not activity."
Well, we are often identified with our activities, or come to identity through them. It seems reasonable to me that in order to get a spin that marginalizes an entire collection of voices you need to shift from activity to identity. Though there are a few voices in old school media who engage, hijack, enbrace blogging the general tenor is a palpable fear of the blogging hegemony that removes the job of public media from the 'hands of professionals'. Well, that fear is felt by librarians, academics and anyone who has worked hard to reach a position where they control the floodgates of information.
In this case, I think you got a fairly mild spin on your point that may be merely an innocent inability to differentiate between the medium and the message as it were.
Permalink to Comment5. JamesJayTrouble on November 26, 2004 1:00 PM writes...
You wanna know what I think?
Oh.. You already think you know what I think...
...which'd be the major part of the problem with bloggers.
Yup, bloggers self-congratulating each other is a bigger problem than any blogger would surmise, I'd surmise.
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