Bloggers ‘cannot have it both ways’

A 2004 exchange between blogger Markos Moulitsas of “Daily Kos” and writer Zachary Roth of the “Washington Monthly,” posted in Columbia Journalism Review, should give an idea how bloggers differ from journalists. In gist, what they said:

MOULITSAS: You’d apply standards and ethics to blogging, which doesn’t have rules? Blogs are the wild, wild west of the media and bloggers are journalistic outlaws. Not bound by journalistic ethics. Each blogger makes his own rules. Our readers draw our borders. And here’s hilarious: We can get to police traditional media on rules they set for themselves even as we gleefully flaunt those rules. The fact that we are blogs lets us get off the hook.

ROTH: It’s blogger’s prerogative to do whatever they want to do. But we get to call it what it is. Those in traditional media submit to rules because it was gradually agreed that the press, like public officials, also influence conduct of public affairs. Bloggers cannot have it both ways: they cannot have the rewards of having a voice in public debate and the rewards of a two-year-old who just realizes he can break things.

Roth is right, except on one thing. In this country, bloggers cannot do whatever they want to do. We have the penal code and the cyber-crime law and maybe a fake news law. Bloggers may be outlaws but if they commit libel, contempt or inciting to sedition, if identified or identifiable, they can be dragged to court. Even in the wild west, many outlaws were gunned down by marshals and sheriffs.