Are Bloggers Journalists?

If you are a part of the conversation in the new web 2.0 world sooner or later you will journey into what is becoming a classic debate (at least in the study of journalism)- should bloggers be considered journalists?

The debate crept its way into my Journalism Ethics class this Wednesday as we began the discussion with Rebecca Blood’s guidelines for bloggers:
1. Publish as fact only that which you believe to be true.
2. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it.
3. Publicly correct any misinformation.
4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry.
5. Disclose any conflict of interest.
6. Note questionable and biased sources.
Blood believes that these six standards are the “sufficient” means to which blogging should be conducted and considered credible. A particularly nice point that Blood makes on the difference between blogger and journalist is, “rights have associated responsibilities; in the end it is an individual’s professionalism and meticulous observance of recognized ethical standards that determines her status in the eyes of society and the law.”

In other words, if you are going to fancy yourself a journalist than you better conduct yourself in an ethical and professional capacity (in which you can be held responsible) by not only Blood’s standards of “believing” what you write to be true, but by knowing what you’re writing is true through a systematic approach of researching your topic and gathering sources and opinions just as any other print journalist would.

Furthermore, I find it outlandish for someone to completely dismiss the idea of bloggers being considered journalists when there is no clear distinction of what constitutes a journalist. There is no journalism license as there is for lawyers or doctors there is no bar to pass or MCATS to Ace, so why discount citizens who are responsibly reporting relevant and provocative information via a blog?

Ultimately, you cannot label all bloggers as journalists or all bloggers as non journalists. It should be viewed only on a case-by-case blog by blog distinction. You can label Joshua Marshall of Talking Points Memo a journalist, but I would be hesitant to say that my friend’s anonymous blog about their weekly routine is up to journalism’s standards.