What Does It Mean To Have Rights?

***Feb 27,2007*** Someone from England Googled into this and it has been a regular archive hit since it was written. I don't think it will seem dated today.

I will start with a disclaimer, an entire library could be written on this subject and I'm not going to.

The US government recognizes some rights, the basic documents of our form of government set some out. These documents begin officially with the Declaration of Independence, there are preceding documents, but this one is officially American. The Declaration sets out two ideas that form this nation's soul, that certain rights precede all forms of government and that when a government no longer serves its people they have the right to change it, violently if needed.

The Revolutionaries fought a long, bitter war against a government they previously had every reason to believe was their own. This experience taught them that their belief in inherent rights could come into conflict with a government's interests and that a government might not represent its citizenry. They had no interest in repeating the experience and tried to pre-empt such a thing's recurrence. They argued long and hard about the Constitution, having failed with the Articles of Confederation to create stability, in order to make a system which was strong enough to withstand the competing interests of its citizenry and flexible enough to meet those interests. Some things like Habeas Corpus they considered basic enough in Law to survive mention in the basic document, the Constitution, others were not so well codified and yet considered of great import. These others composed the Bill of Rights, a formal recognition of rights that were not derived from government, or created by government, but actually superior to government. The ideals of the Declaration of Independence were given codification or enumeration.

The things that they had declared in embarking on war with the most powerful nation in the world was now set out in definite wording. These men never intended that these rights superseded responsibility in action nor that a right allowed the destruction of our fellows, they assumed that simple humanity required an end point to the exercise of a right. They also were more inclined to err on the side of the individual's sense than the government's interests. It is important to remember that these individuals were primarily of English descent or of English Law culture and had watched and finally fought the disintegration of their relationship with their government over a clash of interests. They knew these issues first hand.

When you accept the idea of rights that are superior to and precede governance you have set a high ideal. You put your government out of business in areas where it has almost always interfered. These are areas that the citizenry has strong feelings and beliefs about, areas that governments have always used or suppressed in service to their interests. No one can deny that religion, as an example, is an issue that is of tremendous import to members of society and that its co-option by government is a powerful tool. It is extraordinarily dangerous to government to let it loose for free expression, government takes a large blow to its interests. Each of the rights that were enumerated is similarly debilitating to government and dangerous in the hands of individuals. The Framers were engaging in a risky course of action.

That brings us to us. We are engaged in a risky enterprise, the exercise of rights that all previous governments restricted in one way or another. The government cannot tell us to only praise it with our words, it also cannot tell us not to say mean hurtful things. It cannot tell us that to say one group is unfit to be within society is wrong and forbidden, it must allow us to go our own way. We can say that our elected officials are liars and cheats in the service of unelected elite interests. This creates a possible source of chaos that the government is forbidden to interfere with. The very few limitations the government is allowed to attempt to enforce are those that involve direct deliberate harm to other's rights. Virtually the only protection offered the government is in the transmittal of government secrets. Even in this arena the government treads on very thin ice, it has of late asserted privileges that it may find are specious. Just in the narrow limits of free speech and free press the situation is fraught with risk to order and civility and particularly to government.

It is easy in our modern world to become comfortable and believe we have safe and secure lives and it is a mistake. We live in a system that encourages and supports dissidence, and finally places the tools of rebellion firmly in the citizenry's hands. This systemic deprivation of power of governance is so deep and broad that its beneficiaries often are not aware of it. The tools of sedition range from speaking and gathering together, to having the arms to fight, and protections from governmental investigations. Every direction the government turns it is constrained. This is not the recipe for quiet sedate life if the people do not wish it and frequently despite their wishes it is not.

Because government, the enforcer of societal order, is so constrained it falls on the citizenry to exercise its rights in manners that do not create harm to their fellows. It falls to the citizenry to make informed and reasoned votes for those who represent them. It falls to the citizenry to be responsible for a government that allows and encourages cooperative society. The onus for failure of the system and violent reaction falls on those who have the very things that so constrain their government. There are those who would place restrictions on rights in the name of order and security, they would attempt to undo the system because its own members are failing it. This is misplaced responsibility, if a situation requires redressing it is not because rights are too broad, it is a failure of those responsible for the structuring of our relationships, which is finally the citizens.

We have the most glorious of opportunities, a government restrained and citizenry empowered and that is where we start. Almost a quarter millennia ago we put into operation the most daring and audacious experiment in history and we stand or fall on our own. We cannot blame the hamstrung and hobbled government, we are the power. Let us take ahold with both hands and move this forward, not fall back into the decay and decadence that is all previous governments.

The Banality of Bush White House Evil

I'm going to recommend this Frank Rich column without comment. If I say any more about torture I'll just be repeating myself and getting more furious.

False Equivalence

I call it false equivalence and jay Rosen over at Press Think covers it in "He Said, She Said" terms regarding the "journalistic" tendency to use two sources competing views as reporting on an issue. Jay is a professor of journalism and so he covers the whys and wherefores in more depth than I will. He sees hopefulness of a decline of the practice, I see its usage as a reason for the decline of newspapers.

False equivalence is the presentation of opposing views as though they are equal and somehow doing so is representative of some truth. This practice is to me reflective of laziness and butt covering, especially in this age of search engines. There is no excuse for printing a story that contains outright falsehoods or misrepresentations as a side of an argument. If a legislator criticizes a parliamentarian tactic of their opposition after having also previously engaged in it that fact is not only pertinent to the story, it is also available. The author of a story that simply quotes such a statement makes a false presentation of that stance as a principled one rather than one of political convenience and spin. The two sides of a dispute are made falsely equivalent.

One could point to the pressure of deadlines or the pressure to be balanced in reporting, both are no more than excuses. Deadlines may exist and the presence of a story covering an event may have value, but there is a serious cost in damage to reputation involved because, now, someone will find out the facts and the story will be slammed for it. It is not balance to create false equivalence, it is virtually lying and at the least leaves the reader uninformed - until a later source coughs up those facts and again a damage to reputation occurs.

It is not only the Judith Millers of reporting that have damaged the credibility of major papers, it is also the practice of false equivalence. Both are a form of propagandizing and the reading public won't stand still for a lot of it - and there has been a lot of it. The cheerleading of the Iraq War was an egregious failure and hugely damaging but to my mind it stands as more an exception than general practice. False equivalence is a general practice and has to be infuriating to a public searching for something close to the truth. Readers walking away from a story not knowing which statement has validity or more relevance get whipsawed when more is revealed, especially if they had an inclination to agree with an inaccurate statement later revealed to be so. There is a sense of betrayal involved and that is fatal for organizations that depend on the faith of their consumers.

There is no doubt that the presence of "free" issues of papers on the internet impacts the advertising revenue for the print versions through falling sales, but this also ignores the greater reach of those papers through such editions. Much more troubling is the failing trust in those sources. Whether it is fear of being labeled tools of an ideology or laziness, false equivalence destroys the credibility of the source. I will generally find out I've been led down a primrose trail, mostly due to suspicion of political statements, but also thanks to the efforts of others with suspicions. At that point I begin to wonder why I've bothered to take seriously the efforts of a newspaper on many fronts.

I don't like anonymous sources though I recognize their necessity in some cases, but I become doubly suspicious when I've found that publication engaging in false equivalence. Why should I give credence to their source when it has been shown to me that they do not fact check on the record sources? The false equivalence given a legislator over a parliamentary tactic is small potatoes compared to doubts about stories regarding secret governmental actions unexpected and unanticipated regarding secret prisons and torture.

Even disregarding the impact on credibility, false equivalence betrays the fundamental purpose of communication, which is the exchange of information. I am not informed by being presented falsehoods or misrepresentations unchallenged, communication has broken down. At best I am confused, at worst I am misinformed and in the position of acting on a mistaken view. One can scarcely be surprised to see "Teabaggers" running around making spurious statements in the face of the reporting on the issues they react to. If Democrats propose and pass actions with statements supporting it balanced by the oppositions completely inaccurate or misleading or fact free statements treated as equivalent there is not reason for them to doubt their stance. If the oppositions' statements about the crushing of the spirit of endeavor by a 3% increase in taxes on income in excess of $250K aren't balanced with historical facts regarding tax rates under various Presidents and the economic outcomes there is no reason for them to doubt their emotional attachment to the stance and the Party. While some people would still engage in complete stupidity on the basis of emotional attachments many would not. Reasoned behavior is thwarted by the actions of those who should be trusted have enhanced it.

To be sure there are and always will be sources consulted for agreement rather than information and those aren't really an issue in this discussion. It is too bad that such slants aren't confined to the editorial pages or opinion segments rather than the news, but it is something to be lived with. False equivalence isn't something to be lived with, it is something to mock and push back against in the interest of reasoned decision making.

WSJ Integrity Under Mudoch, Hahahaha-oops

On April 22 Marcus Brauchli "resigned" as Editor of the WSJ, apparently under "pressure." The five member committee established at the time of the Fox purchase to ensure the journalistic integrity of the WSJ was not informed. The committee was unhappy, as the WSJ themselves reports:

The committee said it relayed its concerns to officials at News Corp., which in December acquired Dow Jones, publisher of the Journal. The officials pledged to keep the committee "thoroughly informed" during the search for Mr. Brauchli's successor, the committee said.

So they're a tad upset?

In its chronology, the committee said it "has not been made aware of any issues of editorial independence or integrity either before or since" the April 22 meeting. The committee said it later met "and decided that there was no practical way to 'unresign' Brauchli and start the process over."

You will pardon me if I also reflect the view of one of the Bancroft family

"I expected this paper to be transformed in the way Mr. Murdoch wants it to be, and it will be, regardless of all the window dressing," said Christopher Bancroft, who opposed the News Corp. deal.

If you think Faux News takes this seriously,

Under the terms of the agreement, the Journal's managing editor has "authority over all news decisions," including "news coverage, length, placement and accompanying art" of stories. A Dow Jones spokesman said, "There is absolutely no suggestion from the special committee that the integrity of the Journal's reporting or of its reporters has been compromised in any way whatsoever."

The same kind of deal was reached when the London Times was sold to Murdoch and the upshot was predictable.

The London committee was supposed to have approval over the hiring and firing of the top editors, according to the newspapers' articles of association. But a year after buying the paper, Mr. Murdoch forced out the Times's editor, Harold Evans, igniting a controversy within media circles.

Whatever could the problem have been?

In recent months, Mr. Brauchli had pushed Journal editors for stories to be shorter and get to the point more quickly. At times, he portrayed this as his own initiative; at other times he said these were instructions from the new owners.

Since the News Corp. takeover, the paper has begun publishing more general-interest and political news, including on the front page, and added more news pages. But Rupert Murdoch, News Corp.'s chairman, was impatient with the pace of change, according to people close to the situation.

I'd guess this paper just wasn't getting trashy enough quickly enough. You can soon expect the boring stodgy accurate journalism of the WSJ to be replaced by its Editorial quality content and be no more than a distant memory. In the interests of accuracy, all block quotes are taken directly from WSJ's own reporting and I'd be willing to bet as favorable to itself as possible.

So who exactly is supposed to be the fan base for the Faux Business Channel? Nobody I've ever heard of - and yes - it is billed as a business channel, and generates tons of......derision. Welcome to Faux News Corp WSJ, if you want to keep your jobs you better learn to suck badly quickly.

Scott McClelland, "What Happened"

A May 28, 2008 post on Scott McClelland that has a bit more current relevance since this is a November 2007 article. I can't help that Google still like this old one.


Publisher Public Affairs offers an excerpt from Scott McClelland's new book about his tenure as George II's Press Secretary, What Happened :

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.
There was one problem. It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the president himself.

Scott, I think there's a problem with the title you might want to fix before it hits the streets, it needs a "?" at the end.

I'll actually try, at this point, to be nice to the man. Of the front men for this presidency, Scott McClelland was the most likable in that he honestly seemed to try to give the press corps the truth and was uncomfortable dodging questions and didn't try to cover foot dragging with jocular "we're all pals here" condescension or manufactured anger. He did his job but at times he clearly didn't like how he was having to do it.

I don't know if I'll spend the money for is book, $27.95 publish date 4/21/08, I think I'll wait for some reviews - I could buy my wife a pretty nice dinner out for that price, and I'm sure I like her.

I think, at this point, that this is a storm in a tea cup.

Cleveland Plain Dealer, Journalism and Blogging - A Collision

I have to thank Pressthink for bringing the Cleveland Plain Dealer's experiment in melding traditional newspapering with blogging, Wide Open , and its demise to my attention. "Wide Open" was composed of four compensated freelance Ohio bloggers, two liberal and two conservative, recruited from the best of Ohio political blogs. The idea was to bring some of the "wide open" atmosphere of blogs to a traditional newspaper site, something important to newspapers facing declining readership. Such a proposal brought with it some pitfalls that seemed to miss everybody.

One of the liberal bloggers made a contribution to Rep Steve LaTourette's (R-OH 14) opponent and LaTourette didn't think much of the idea. The PD told the offending blogger to not write about either candidate - he resigned, the other half of the liberal team quit in solidarity and that was pretty much the end of it. The Plain Dealer's problem was that they, by virtue of the stipend, could be linked to the blogger and his contribution and that somehow involved them in, lobbying or something partisan. Jay Rosen at Pressthink wrote a detailed analysis, I'm going to be a bit shorter, after all he's the professional and has done the work already - and my opinion isn't quite in line with his, very close, but not quite.

Newspapers have problems dealing with the world of the internet, Jay has some really excellent work on this, and while they're scrambling to address them they are stuck with institutionalized thinking and policies. The "up-front" problem that hit the PD is what strikes me, many bloggers follow the etiquette of linking and disclosures and most aren't paid, or if they are it doesn't amount to much so they tend to be free of institutional pressures. Journalists get paychecks. Newspapers make much of their neutrality, bloggers tend to mix it up.

I getting around to a point...

There is an inherent honesty in blogging as it stands, we just tell you what we think and you're pretty darn sure we have an agenda and if we're disclosing it - you know. Newspapers make great claims to objectivity, you'd darn near expect that if someone asserted that 2+2=4 they'd find someone to make a counter argument, and it is nonsense. The Washington Post and the Washington Times exist in the same city - if not the same reality - and there wouldn't be two papers if objectivity existed. Yes, some are a bit more than others but it only boils down to a degree of bias rather than its existence.

Newspapers have one obvious agenda, their profit, and possibly a corporate owner's profit, which is rather powerful as incentives go. But it goes much deeper than that, the writers have to have researched their articles and that process involves thinking about it and making decisions which inevitably leaves the writer with an opinion on the merits. I have pointedly not posted in detail on the Merkley and Novick campaigns for the Democratic senatorial primary because I don't wish to make a public decision at this point and doing that work would influence me into it. I want to sit back and watch for awhile. I want to be free to just think about it for awhile. A newspaper doesn't have that luxury, they have to report, and take a shot at being even-handed, but it will fail. There is some journalistic blogging out there but you will detect the slant the writer takes, because that is just how it is going to be.

Now something about political bloggers needs to be mentioned, they do this stuff for free - or very nearly - and they do it because they care. Expecting someone who cares enough to spend this kind of time on something and not be politically active doesn't indicate two live brain cells in communication with each other, and telling them they can't write about something they care enough to be active in is a recipe for...well...a resignation or two and the death of what could have been a pretty darn smart move. And over a pretence, because that is exactly all that the public protestations of newspapers are.

If Fox News opened every broadcast with, "Rupert owes his US media empire to the Bush family and we're Republican shills - so here's our version of the news," instead of "Fair and Balanced" nobody would throw rocks at them and call them FauxNews. Keith Olberman gets away with being the way he is because he makes no pretence about it and even as NBC gets whacked by BillO for trending leftward, they won't publicly own up to trying to get back off the right toward the theoretical middle while a safe bet would be that most of their writers would be more comfortable well left of today's middle. The point is that disclosure defuses arguments of bias and lets even handedness be honestly attempted.

So, yes Plain Dealer, you should have had a disclosure policy for the bloggers, but the failures and shortcoming in this issue are yours and the supposed neutrality you require and let the public think exists and whiners like LaTourette to complain about.

Faux News' Pal

Since I don't follow the Murdoch version of news I have to take these folks at NY Daily News word for it, but it seems Rudy Guiliani has friends there. He's had 115 minutes of free face time on Fox, over half on Hannity and Colmes which is 25% more than any other Republican candidate. You might wonder if that has something to do with his lead and how that would benefit Murdoch. Don't even think this is an accident, there's a bit more to the story.

August 9th in Cincinnati Guiliani held a closed door $250/head fundraiser and had...Sean Hannity do the introduction. "But some who were there - including Hannity's boss at WABC, Phil Boyce - said Hannity was typically effusive.
"He talked about Rudy's leadership after 9/11, about how Rudy had turned the city around and taken people off the welfare rolls," said Boyce "There wasn't anything he said that I haven't heard him say on the radio." "

Just so it is known how Fox looks at the whole thing, " "Sean is not a journalist - Sean is a conservative commentator," said Bill Shine, Fox's senior vice president of programming. "Sean doesn't hide, and never has hidden, his beliefs from anyone." " Now while that might be the case, it does not say anything about the political stance of Fox, how it meddles in politics, and just what it is they are trying to accomplish.

The NYT Case For Trade

The NYT carries an Editorial supporting trade and whacking Democrats for opposing fast track and free trade agreements with Peru and Panama and states that increases in trade since WWII have added $1 trillion/year (2003 - $s) to the economy and that if the rest of the barriers fell and additional $500 billion. Nice numbers...for somebody.

"The plight of American workers is all too real — and the Bush administration has shown an astonishing lack of concern," shows that the NYT actually exists in the same dimension but their ideas of addressing this amount to band aids. Creating a more progressive tax structure and ensuring that displaced workers don't lose affordable health care may be very laudable policy moves, but do exactly not squat to address job losses. There certainly are some factors that do not involve trade, decreasing union membership and insourced labor (illegal immigration) directly affect wages but the wages affected are still wages, not lost jobs. The loss of skilled labor jobs and manufacturing jobs to near serf labor nations forces workers into lower paying jobs or out of work entirely. Anyone willing to take even a glance at conditions in China must realize the there is no "fair" trade agreement possible with that nation that allows any American business to compete in the same product arena unless Americans are willing to live in a sewer at serf wages. I do not have a magic wand solution of my own, but looking in the wrong direction is scarcely going to generate useful ideas or policies.

Allowing the bottom to fall out of the labor wage base drags the rest of the middle and lower wage bases down creating a situation where work that was the step up out of poverty becomes poverty. But that is not the same thing as creating and maintaining good wage jobs. When the NYT boosterisms Trade even with a caveat about labor the smart thing to do is follow the money. The $1 Trillion has landed in whose pockets? Certainly not labor's.

Who Is Hart Williams and Why Does He Scare FauxNews

Hart Williams is a blogger, leftish sort, who in the past ran Boregasm as Ed Waldo wherein much information about Howie Rich was researched and published, embarrassing information. The entire Libertarian/AnnRaynd thing was pretty thoroughly dissected. If you'd like to know something more than the press releases it's still up, but Ed Wald (er Hart) has moved along to Zug, "the little blog that could."

That rascally Ed Waldo wrote a piece, Another Dip in the Ted Nugent Slime that rather incautiously suggested that the hate rhetoric of the Right as practised by Nugent and Limbaugh will lead to bloodletting and at that point he'd like a piece of Rush and offered dibs on Nugent. After the civil war starts... Faux News picked it up and Hannity and Colmes ran with it, including naturally Nugent - scared for his family. English must not quite make to being their second language. Idjits.

Hart Williams at one time wrote for Hustler, which seem to particularly offend them, Vitter seems a bit more relevant but... The fact is that Hart Williams aka Ed Waldo has provided considerably more service to the nation in the arena of political information than Faux News has. If you think this is just kneejerk lefty stuff go read Hart.

Moyers On Rupert

I don't suppose there exists a more stark comparison of journalistic standards than Bill Moyers and Rupert Murdoch so it has to be entertaining when Bill takes on Rupe. Now Faux News may be most familiar to readers but it is scarcely the tip of the iceberg aimed at the Titanic called journalism. You'd be as wise to hire a pedophile babysitter as let this mutt anywhere near something regarded as journalism.

Yes, the WSJ editorial page has sucked eggs for quite some time now, but its reporting has maintained its reputation. Well, I suppose it matters most just how much Rupe offers. Now I seldom just do set-ups for somebody else's writing, but here's Bill .

Who's Ahead? Jay Rosen...

Jay Rosen over at Press Think is a writer I admire for good clear writing and a propensity to look outside the ordinary press models. His article "Who's Ahead? No, Seriously..." takes issue with the decades old horse race model of political reporting, he'd much rather have a who's ahead in ideas race or poll. He believes the model is used as both an 'objective journalism' tool and because it's easy. (there's more to it, but I'm not going to re-write his superior writing) He also believes it has outlasted its usefulness.

I happen to agree with all his reasons for distaste for the model, and another of my own, it is by definition inaccurate, especially this time around. It is a snapshot taken at a nearly meaningless moment and taken to mean considerably more than it possibly could. As an example, Hillary leads the race by having 36% (or so) among 8 candidates and this means what? Does it mean 64% do not like Hillary? Does it mean 64% just happen to like some other more than Hillary? Does it mean the Clinton name trumps "X" or that woman trumps man or that her votes and policy statements trump? If any of those are so why and by how much and what is reasonably disregarded?

Jay's proposal cuts around these questions and actually informs. I want to know what (in this case) Democratic Americans are thinking. I'm not in the least interested in a beauty pagent, I don't care if you could "land a 747" on Mitt's shoulders and I don't care that Hillary is named Clinton. Our version of political reportage has become so bloodlessly 'objective' in the sense of putting whatever knuckle head will take an opposing view that it is meaningless and talking about a physical attribute makes as much sense.

Well, there's some good writing over there and some ideas so click on over...

Dow and Murdoch

Rupe Murdoch's attempt to buy the Wall Street Journal is being frustrated by the Bancroft family's disinterest and because they hold the controlling shares of Dow Jones nothing will happen unless they get interested. They are so disinterested that the board has not even responded to Murdoch's $60 per share or $5 billion. The Ottaway family, with 6.2%, has stated that such a purchase would "damage" the Dow Jones name. Bloomberg , who competes with Dow Jones, while noting the "frustration," seems to believe that Murdoch will stick with his bid, for awhile at least.

Considering the nearly knee jerk conservatism of the WSJ's editorial board this would seem to be a blunt statement regarding News Corp journalism. There is little to be done about Rupe's junk, the Republicans let him in, he's here, he owes them, and he's got bucks.

Rupe, The New York Post, Junk, and What's New

Rupert Murdoch has spent some time recently trying to persuade people that his organization publishes real journalism and rises to the level of real papers like...oh, say... The Wall Street Journal - the people being the owners of Dow Jones. You might have to look around the world pretty hard to find somebody with two active brain cells that believes they publish something beyond fish-wrappers. That might seem like a bit of exaggeration until you stop to consider that the broadcast versions are Faux News and Fox Network, and since their employees include Brit Hume, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and Chris Wallace your hands might start shaking when you contemplate the WSJ in the same hands.

Mentioning fishwrappers brings up the latest brouhaha over at The Jew York Post and its 'gossip' showcase Page Six. Jared Stern was suspended after allegations he demanded money for favorable coverage who is considering suing and whose lawyer obtained a statement from Ian Spiegelman also a former writer alleging editor Col Allen frequented a strip club, that long time column author Richard Johnson took a $1000 gift, and that Rupert Murdoch, Post owner, directed Page Six to avoid articles unfavorable to China where he was conducting business. Page Six published the allegations and denied some of them, sort of, in a rather botched preemptive strike. It has turned out to be a rather poor version of a soap opera - you know, darn near the definition of august journalism and high journalistic standards.

Bloggers and Journalism

On another Blog a writer stated that maybe he could be called a bad journalist for not asking all the questions of someone he was interviewing. A commenter wanted to know if he wasn't just an opinionated lefty with a free blog site. Hmmm.

You'll find no references to journalism and myself in this blog, I'm not. I comment and I advocate. I do not go find news stories and report on them, I express my opinions. I try to make sure I have facts where facts are relevant, but I don't write treatists so I don't usually footnote or source note. So, we're not talking about me.

There seems to be some idea that being a journalist involves a degree and a major media employer. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Being a journalist is defined by engaging in the activity of journalism, which is finding stories, asking the right questions, writing well about the answers, and publishing the work. The activity defines the actor and if those qualifications are met, then that's what you are. Nothing says a journalist can't also be a commentator, though there is some requirement that there's a separation between the two activities.

The definition of journalist I'm disputing would include Judith Miller of the New York Times as a journalist - a prestigious degree and a prestigious very large major media employer. What Judith Miller actually was is defined properly as a propagandist. She got fired for it, but hey, everybody called her a journalist up until then. Had she betrayed the concepts that define a journalist? Evidently enough to be roundly criticized and fired for it. So, the real world definition relies on the activity not something else, like degrees.

The fact that a site is free, electronic, or whatever means of publishing is immaterial. Is the written matter properly done and is it read are the questions that count. The site I'm referring to probably gets read more times per day than I do per month, so it gets read. I reach out and touch some people every day, I have some influence with a group of people. Now I won't get all puffed up about how much or what kind of influence, reading something has an impact on thinking. A site that has large readership has a larger impact and the fact that the site may engage in journalism increases that impact. The impact I have involves perception and opinion, the impact of journalism impacts knowledge of facts.

The Baker City Herald's journalists will not claim to have the impact or quality of some of the really large outlets, but they do the work and almost always get it right. If that's the case for them and is the case for a Blogger, then there is no material difference. The quality of the writing may vary and the source availability may vary but the activity is the same. It is quite factual to compare the Bloggers of today with the press of Revolutionary times, and probably favorable to the Bloggers. There is a more developed sense of fairness and accuracy in today's reporting, and those who don't bother with it are soon known. I will again point to Judith Miller when people want to rail against the damage done by unprincipled Bloggers.

Blogging journalists have one huge advantage over traditional journalists, there is no editorial board with advertisers to please or corporate masters to avoid offending. I know very well how important that editorial freedom is, I regularly offend some readers of particular issue orientations with my commentary and I'm free to do so and to continue to do so.

When a blogger gives you some good well sourced journalism, be grateful and don't be afraid to call it journalism.