Both Eugene Volokh and guest blogger Daniel Drezner posted their takes about whether Bloggers were Journalists on The Volokh Conspiracy today. Both did an excellent and succinct job of describing the differences between Journalists and Bloggers. Such has become controversial as Blogger ethics have been called into question since the discovery that the author of The Agonist [link to blog omitted purposefully] plagarized material from another site. [see Noted War Blogger Cops to Copying] I do not consider myself a journalist, as I do not research the factual basis of news items. I only state what others have reported, adding some of my thoughts and comments to the subject at hand. CyberJournalist.net has proposed a Blogger's Code of Ethics. I have yet to read it, but likely will at some point. However, I have always thought I was an ethical person, and will live by the standards I set for myself. If I am able to correctly attribute my source, I will do so. It may be that my source did not properly attribute it to the source from which they received it. That happens on the World Wide Web. So, what is mine are the thoughts, ideas, and comments. All other items came from somewhere else. Whether such items are reliable or not should always be speculative. All information of a factual nature is speculative, as truth is relevant to perception. People see and hear what they want to see and hear, and how they describe what they see and hear is corrupted by that mode of reception.
Posted by Tiger at May 3, 2003 12:08 AM