Do Blogging and Journalism Mix?

Journalists who blog and who value their profession have no choice but to navigate the blogging terrain carefully. As I found out in my case, being also a blogger eventually clashed with my values and instincts as a journalist. It’s tough to play by the rules in a game that practically has none.

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(This is the continuation of the post “The ‘Golf War’ and the Perils of Blogging“)

Journalists are accountable to the public. They have a covenant with their audience. Their main currencies are accuracy and fairness. I don’t think these should apply to bloggers who use such a loose, free-wheeling medium that has great potential for misuse. Bloggers are generally only accountable to themselves.

The discipline in blogging is different from journalism. Bloggers can be, and are allowed to be, whimsical. Journalists are involved in a fact-checking process that should have no room for whimsy. Bloggers can be trigger-happy because the medium tempts the undisciplined to shoot his mouth off. We expect journalists not to behave like that.

Journalists who blog, like me, therefore put themselves in a dilemma: When I blog, do I stop being a journalist? I have been asking myself this question ever since I realized the mistakes I committed in my posts on the Pangandaman case.

By blogging about public issues or events – things that I should otherwise be covering as a journalist – I exposed myself to the intellectual and ethical trip-ups that are inherent in blogging. For instance, does my audience distinguish the blogger from the journalist? When I, as a blogger, commit errors, does the distinction still hold so that if my credibility as a blogger suffers, my credibility as a journalist remains intact?

By blogging, am I not, though unwittingly, promoting a medium that, because of its great potential for misuse, can in fact damage my journalism?

One can argue that the medium is not the problem; it’s how people use it. One can also argue that the mainstream press has always been full of irresponsible reportage and careless commentary way before blogging was invented. But that’s not an argument for journalists to start blogging about public issues – it is an argument against it. The answer to bad journalism is good journalism, not blogging.

Blogging is neat if all I blog about is how cute my sons are. But looking back at my blogging output over the years, particularly recently, I see that I had been drawn into a world where it is extremely easy to carelessly regurgitate lies and half-truths, even asinine thought. While blogging provides a venue where I can say whatever I want to say, particularly things that I am not able to say in my journalistic pieces because of the conventions and restrictions of my profession, I now think that it might be impossible to make a distinction between my journalist self and my blogging doppelganger. I can, of course, continue wearing both hats for as long as I could but sooner or later, something’s got to give.

Make no mistake: I have always been an opinionated person. Even before some genius coined the word blog, I was already writing commentary and opinion pieces, ignoring the view held by many that reporters should not voice their opinion publicly because it would betray their bias and, as a result, make it difficult for them to do their job as reporters. (This is why you seldom see journalists writing columns. And most of those who did decide to become pundits did so after retiring from the newsroom.)

Still, I’d like to think my opinion pieces were grounded on more solid information, on sounder analysis. These views were formed by my own journalistic appreciation of facts, not by some knee-jerk instinct to expose and shame members of a political dynasty allied with a regime that is mired in corruption. But in my rush, fueled by outrage, to make public my opinion about a potentially explosive issue, I threw all caution and good judgment to the wind. I forgot that I was, before anything else, a journalist.

It would be a disservice to society if journalists lost sight of who they are and what they do and resort to just whining in their blogs about matters that they should otherwise be investigating.