Participatory Journalism, Democratic and Flawed
Participatory journalism is extremely democratic in nature and that kind of freedom comes with flaws. The journalistic model of HuffingtonPost leverages the democratic nature of participatory journalism more successfully than any other online media outlet out there. If you’re willing to put in some work, a commenter can become a blogger, and a blogger can get their posts on the front page where it will be seen by millions of visitors if enough HuffingtonPost readers like it. And HuffingtonPost gets thousands of pages of content for free. What’s not to like (if you don’t mind not being paid for your original blogging content)?
By leveraging the work of citizen journalists, HuffingtonPost takes the chance that the writing from their corps of bloggers might cross editorial lines. That’s what happened today when HuffingtonPost blogger Erik Sean Nelson posted a blog called: “Palin Will Run in ‘12 on More Retardation Platform.” The text of the post was saved and posted on Free Republic an example of “Liberal Media Bias” before it was deleted by editors at HuffingtonPost. Here is the opening paragraph:
“In Sarah Palin’s resignation announcement she complained about the treatment of her son Trig who always teaches her life lessons. She said that the “world needs more Trigs, not fewer.” That’s a presidential campaign promise we can all get behind. She will be the first politician to actually try to increase the population of retarded people. To me, it’s kinda like saying the world needs more cancer patients because they teach us such personal lessons.
Reasonable people can agree that the above is tasteless and offensive to most people, and HuffingtonPost editors removed the post as soon as their attention was called to it. However, many conservatives quickly reacted to the post as evidence of the now tired claim of “liberal media bias.” The HuffingtonPost is not the Washington Post or The New York Times for which we have different expectations. HuffingtonPost is a self-proclaimed liberal news outlet just as The Drudge Report is a self-proclaimed conservative media outlet. None of this is really important because study after study has shown that there is no liberal media bias and conservatives who continue to believe such a thing exists are misguided and ideologically narrow.
While the controversy around the Palin post blew up on Twitter, I and several colleagues were dismayed to see none other than the trend setting conservative Meghan McCain attributing the post to “liberal media bias” in a tweet that has since been deleted. To which I replied:
“yo @McCainBlogette about HuffPo post, that’s participatory journalism, not liberal media bias. Extremely democratic and often flawed” (link)
Nicole Belle also responded to McCain’s deleted tweet:
(link)
I think some liberals like Nicole and I keep hoping that conservatives will let go of the liberal media bias meme. But if forward thinking conservatives like Meghan McCain buy into it, there doesn’t seem to be much hope that establishment conservatives will ever let it go–facts be damned.
Especially in this case, when it’s clear an independent blogger posted something inappropriate and HuffingtonPost editors took the proper action, calling “liberal media bias” is just silly. What happened with the Palin post is what will become a common complication of participatory journalism. As Clay Shirky has noted, outlets like HuffingtonPost and RedState encourage democratic citizen engagement and that’s a positive result. But it’s a positive result that carries some hazards we have to account for if we believe in the value of participatory journalism.
In the end, it’s clear that Meghan McCain rethought her initial impulse to attribute an errant post on HuffingtonPost to the “liberal media bias” or she wouldn’t have deleted her tweet in which she made that assertion. We are in an interesting time in terms or journalism experiments. Those of us in favor or democratizing the media can only hope that McCain and other conservatives continue expanding their views as far as assessing the impact and value of participatory journalism.
Similar Posts:
- National Dems Come Out In Support Of Nevada
- My Radio Chat about Sarah Palin
- Why McCain Is Hiding And Why Sarah Palin Is Not My Gal
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Calling HuffPo and Drudge news outlets is an interesting degrading of that term. When individuals can write what they want with no accountability to any editing process or editor (other than as you note, simply removing the post), sometimes little, no, or single sourcing with no multiple source corroboration of allegations I’m not sure you could find even one journalism program, school or professor who would agree these are news outlets. Huffpo and Drudge are simply what they appear to be — and usually informed about as much as news conversations at the office or the workplace — sometimes well informed, sometimes not. If “participatory journalism” is both democratic and flawed then I’m not sure why we would call it journalism unless we are also changing the definitions of that term too. Why don’t we just call it online conversations that are both democratic and flawed and leave it at that…it seems that is what they really are…
Thanks for the comment. I would say you should call it journalism because often, those bloggers break news–not always, but often enough that its journalism–and evolving form of journalism that is imperfect but journalism nonetheless.
Sorry Myrna, jzt is exactly right….bloggers don’t report, they give opinions and is one sided. You are probably confused because journalism today is one sided. Thats why the term “journalism today is dead” is used…
Plenty of bloggers break news–conservative and liberal. I’ve even broken news although that’s not what I try to do. You’re right, though, most bloggers don’t–they write editorial content.