Poynter on the Record

I am sure that Jill Carroll and her family are too busy inhaling the sweet spring air of freedom to spend time sniffing out the pollution in the blogosphere. Anyone who spent three months imagining the grimmest fate for this young journalist in the hands of terrorists can't get too upset when a little Internet posse goes after her scalp.

Nevertheless, this is not a good moment for the bustling, energetic Wild West of the new Internet media. Remember when a former CBS executive described bloggers as guys in pajamas writing in their living rooms? Well, it seems that many have only one exercise routine: jumping to conclusions.

In the hours between captivity and true freedom, Jill Carroll was seen in one propaganda film describing the mujahedeen as "good people fighting an honorable fight" and in another interview saying she was never threatened. An online jeering section bought it hook, line and sinker without waiting to hear that the videos were made under threat. As Alex Jones of Harvard's Shorenstein Center said, "They were gulled by a clever piece of propaganda and ought to be ashamed of themselves." ...

If newspapers are the first rough draft of history, a blog is like reading a never-ending draft as it's being written and published, mostly unedited, without standards or correction boxes. Defenders will tell you that blogs are "fact-checked" in the rough and tumble of the marketplace by other bloggers. But don't count on it.

The difference between old media and new, MSM and blog, says Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute, is the difference between sitting at a restaurant and having your food delivered nicely plated or standing at a buffet nibbling constantly. It's the 24/7 news cycle brought down to the 604,800 seconds-per-week cycle.
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