Flutterby™! : Warblogging on CNN 2003-04-02 15:05:36.836595+00

Warblogging on CNN

2003-04-02 15:05:36.836595+00 by ebradway 4 comments

Saw an interview last night on CNN (on TV, sorry, no link) about Warbloggers. It was interesting to see news media people talking about what they considered a new, cutting-edge medium. There was much skepticism (mostly on the part of the CNN talking head) about the authenticity of information in a 'blog and how does a reader know if information is correct. What he failed to understand that 'blogs create communities of trust. For instance, I give information gathered via Flutterby greater trust because I know the people who gathered the information and have significant trust in those sources (even if I disagree with the commentary). I actually put less faith in CNN!

I think it's important to remember that CNN has a vested interest in keeping people mistrustful of alternative news sources. Yes, there is no guarantee that a weblog is truthful, but just as we learn to trust and mistrust large-scale media sources, we'll learn to trust the smaller ones. And because in the case of the smaller ones we're learning about the personalities rather than just the policies of a large organization I think we'll be able to derive better information from more individual outlets.