As I was reading my daily celeb gossip today, it struck me: blogging is about the most exercised outlet for free speech around: almost everybody has a blog, including me which is funny because I would have never pictured myself with one. But back to my celeb gossip exampl;, I was on Perez Hilton's website.(1) No not Paris Hilton, the ever popular Perez Hilton is a 29 year-old gay guy who blogs about celebrities. He "doodles childish slurs like 'slut' on pictures of Kristen Dunst, gushes over his favorite bands, and questions the sexuality of different stars."(2) Personally, I find him hilarious. Although he may not display free speech at its finest, the mere fact that he has a nationally popular website dedicated to making fun of others shows just how often people are taking advantage of their freedom of speech through blogs, and his own new found celebrity shows just how much of an affect is it having on society.
As this craze really took off, London's BBC exclaimed, "Why, we are all journalists now!"(3) The idea that every citizen can be a journalists has changed the way people recieve and judge information. For example, every time I look for sources instead of articles, blogs pop up. Just last year (2006) statistics show that "A new blog is created every second, adding to the 37 million that already exist, according to David Sifry, founder of the Technorati weblog data-set and link tracker/search engine."(3) This new little world has been dubbed a "blogsphere." The Blog Herald is a website that was developed in 2003 "as a premium source of blog and blogging related news for bloggers. It was the first blog dedicated exclusively to the news of the blogosphere and remains the longest (and largest) standing resource of its kind."(4) But how much good does this "blogosphere" bring?
This new communication medium has made freedom of expression easier than it's ever been, but it has its drawbacks. Blogs have been "implicated in destroying friendships and ruining job prospects, and could interfere in other important arenas;"(5) just like Facebook, people don't really realize that speech they put up on the internet is available for everyone to read. These bloggers might regret so freely and openly expressing their feelings.
In May of this year one doctor in Boston, Mass. incurred negative effects fromblogging. Robert P. Lindeman, an ivy-league educated doctor, was on trial in the Suffolk Superior Court for a malpractice suit. The suit involved the death of a 12 year-old boy that Lindeman failed to diagnose with diabeties and sadly he died six weeks later. During this case Lindeman kept a blog, under the name Lindeman Flea, about the details of the trial; he "wrote about meeting with an expert on juries who advised him how to act when he was cross- examined. Flea was instructed to angle his chair slightly toward the jury, keep his hands folded in his lap, and face the jury when answering questions, slowly. "(5) He was told that his fate, like other doctors in malpractice suits, would be judged upon his character. He didn't realize that anyone knew about his anonymous blogs. Once his blog was exposed to the jury he was characterized as a "an arrogant, uncaring jerk" and the case was settled the next day.(5)
Reno v. ACLU (6) showed us that the internet is the greatest avenue to free speech and so it should have the greatest protection. Since there is no scarce spectrum anyone can be their own publisher and anyone has access to others. What these millions of bloggers don't realize is that just because we have this amazing outlet for our speech, it isn't always consequence free. We are at liberty to say anything we like, but it might come back to haunt us.
Souces:
1. http://perezhilton.com/
2. http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/05/14/102815.php
3. http://www.worldpress.org/2373.cfm
4. http://www.blogherald.com/about
5.http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/05/31/blogger_unmasked_court_case_upended/
6. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/96-511.ZS.html
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4 comments:
I can always count on your blogs being the most interesting, Kelly. Great topic. Bloggers are the new journalists of the world broadening the marketplace of ideas even further. I started my first blog after I received advice from Clarence Page. Clarence told me the best thing an aspiring reporter can do is start a blog; it's the new media. The down side: blogging added a whole lot of bad journalists to the market.
You also mentioned that statements in blogs can greatly tarnish a person’s reputation. This is true, but statements in newspapers can do the same. If blogging really is the new media outlet, bloggers need to realize and respect the fact. Your words will follow you; make sure you want them too.
Kristen
I agree that Blogging had become the newest forum of speech within our society.Think about it each of us in journalism 199 are becoming mini journalists. We are posed to come up with ideas each week and post by a deadline a finished product. Sounds to me like a journalist. As great as this new forum is it also has major draw backs. Think about the great authors of your time. The authors that made you think and crave more. These authors are gone and are now being replaced by "Perez Hilton".
On the topic of consequences I see where one may think that this forum allows for stricter consequence for speech. However, if you take a look at the idea of subsequent punishment it provides much of the same consequences. You are punished for what you say after you say it. So with blogs you are punished after you click the "publish" tab. I suppose it is just making the idea of speech and gaining a large audience easier for the speaker.
Blogs are the new generation of speech, the mouth has been replaced with the keyboard, and with this can inevitably come consequences.
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