NPR Ombudsman on blogs: Amoral, pesky, youthful informational indiscretions
US National Public Radio (NPR) has previously been a friendly voice in the battle of blogs, but NPR’s Ombudsman has different ideas.
Jeffrey A. Dvorkin, writes in a post titled “When Those Pesky Blogs Undermine NPR News” that blogs are amoral and that the blogosphere is a place where “the possibility of civic responsibility remains remote…. [and a] place where the philosophy of ‘who posts first, wins’ predominates.”.
Not content stopping here, he then goes on to state
“The blogs entertain, they provoke, and they are not constrained by journalistic standards of truth telling. This is a challenge and a danger for journalism. Can the MSM adopt any blog values to attract the younger audience? Or should we wait and see? Perhaps these younger people will outgrow these youthful informational indiscretions and come to their senses – and back to media that can serve them best.”
I like his inane bit about NPR complaints about receiving form-letter complaints. It’s inane for at least two reasons:
(1) I bet NPR, like many other news outlets, when reporting on citizens contacting their elected officials, don’t bother to usually specify or separate out the form-letters. But now, because it’s the media getting such things, they need to call attention to it?
(2) On the substance of what those form-letters addressed, they give a rather stupid response which demonstrates either a lack of comprehension as to what words communicate, a defensive posture against any criticism of their priesthood, or both.
More dinosaurs. They’re everywhere.