Blogs : not a better form of journalism

Heerim Suh

Where do you usually get a proper information you need? Do you feel satisfied with

the information you see in the monitor? When we search for something on the Internet there

are many categories coming up on a single page containing blogs, news articles and books.

Among these sources, not all information is valid. Many of the sources are not certified as

proper information. The media itself should serve to provide users with correct, unbiased, and

controlled contents. Although some people insist blogs can replace traditional media, blogs are

not a better way to report news than traditional forms of media for three reasons; credibility,

biased information, and inappropriate content.

Firstly, blogs contain credibility problems since they are basically written and designed

by amateurs who are not fully educated and qualified as professional information conveyers.

Given this, there is always a possibility that bloggers could report inaccurate news or

information which may confuse people. One famous incident is the ‘Tajinyo’ blog, in which

some offensive people slandered a Korean singer, Tablo, claiming that his graduation from

Stanford University was a lie and it grew into a big social issue being broadcast on the news.

This incident clearly shows the harmful consequences of blog use. Also, as bloggers are not

fully aware of privacy rules, they can both intentionally and unintentionally reveal other

people’s private information, which can grow into a serious social problem. For example,

invasion of privacy caused by rumors and inaccurate reports led a number of celebrities to

commit suicide. One instance is that a Korean female singer, Uni, committed suicide six years

ago because of rude and offensive rumors. To make matters worse, blogs are often used for

bullying other classmates among middle school students and these kind of blogs contain

exaggerated and misleading talks about a bullied student.

Secondly, contents in blogs are biased most of the time as reports, information, and

opinions on blogs are written subjectively by amateur writers. Bloggers, in some way, play a

role of journalist by describing backgrounds of specific events and giving their own take and

opinion. In fact, if people rely on blogs to get news and reports, they can be affected by one-

sided or biased reports. This can bring about negative public opinion or extreme conflict among

community members, especially young students who are not fully educated to form their own

thoughts. For example, in 2008, there was a huge candlelight vigil against importing the beef

of cows with BSE or mad cow disease. Some parts of the candlelight vigil were instigated by

some people who were against the then president, Lee Myungbak. They intentionally reported

on the false, exaggerated effects of BSE. There may a claim insisting traditional forms of

journalism such as news media and newspaper also contain biased view on certain matters.

However, the biased views of traditional journalism are different from that of blogs. The take

from news and newspapers are based on a macroscopic discourse of a social problem which is

well supported by the public.

Thirdly, the content on blogs often contains unfiltered harmful information. This can

be a serious problem because anybody from kids to adults has access to blogs. Unfiltered

content is mostly harmful to Internet surfers and has especially bad effects on growing children.

In fact, this feature of blogs is becoming a big issue because children and teenagers are

constantly exposed to harmful information such as inappropriate advertisements. Constant and

repetitive exposure to such content leads kids and teenagers to establish a wrong set of values

on gender roles. Actually, distorted images and contents of blogs made teenagers doubt about

what they have learned from school. In the long run, this could lead to producing sex criminals.

Furthermore, even though main sites take control of the harmful blogs, it is impossible to block

all of the blogs as they are coming up very fast and thousands of people visit the blogs in a

short time.

In conclusion, blogs contain major problems that have the possibility of growing in to

serious social issues. Credibility, biased information, and inappropriate content are the main

problem. It is true there are many blogs that play their role as desirable information providers,

however, it is difficult to recognize them as valid and proper journalism. The harmful impacts

of blogs exceed their advantages because they contain potential serious problems; therefore,

blogs cannot be a better form of journalism.