Iraq and Afghanistan

Blogs have become the new media for many Americans. But it has come to my attention that they are increasingly seen as a source of information or “news”. In an environment in which there is entirely too much unverified and unverifiable, indeed willfully misleading, information disseminated, particularly through the internet and talk radio, it strikes me that perhaps those involved, bloggers and blog visitors alike, should develop a more restrained attitude toward blogs. Unlike email exchanged among friends and acquaintances, blogs are sent out to a potentially large and amorphous public unable to judge the nature and the limitations of the author. This being the case, a blogger should look on his blog as a responsible enterprise meant to be a vehicle for the dissemination of his or her commentary. This commentary should, in my estimation, be based primarily on information gained from standard and reliable sources.

This leads immediately to the question of what are “standard and reliable sources”. To me, this means sources that are given credibility on a day in and day out basis by the media or by the academic and scientific community. These sources are admittedly often misguided, less informed than they believe, or frankly misguided. But these sources do contrast markedly with what I refer to as “casual sources”. These are sources whose verity or verifiability has not generally been widely accepted in the communities referred to above. Most of what we might call “rumor” and most bitter and tendentious communications falls into the casual category. If the blogger is actually a creator of new information, then of course this can and should be disseminated through the blog. But if the blogger is not personally the creator, or personally able to verify a piece of information, then he or she should pass on casual information received from casual sources not at all or only after heavy qualification with reference to the source.