Mediawatch
On the abc’s Mediawatch program aired tonight there was a follow up story on the credibility of one of The Australian’s news stories sourced from an online blog opinionjournal.com rather than its more credible sister site The Wall St Journal. MediaWatch’s main critisism of the news story was it gave a blogger the credibility of a journalist. In reply to this Rupert Murdoch gave the below statement in defence of The Australian:
“We may want to experiment with the concept of using bloggers to supplement our daily coverage of news on the net. There are of course inherent risks in this strategy —— chief among them maintaining our standards for accuracy and reliability … But they may still serve a valuable purpose; broadening our coverage of the news; giving us new and fresh perspectives to issues; deepening our relationship to the communities we serve, so long as our readers understand the clear distinction between bloggers and our journalists.”
Isnt it interesting how much interest the media is placing on the credibility of bloggers, i guess this is in why ethical standards have been promoted by serious bloggers, to enhance their credibility in the eye of the reader.
Read more about this Mediawatch segment here!
