by Mark Dykeman

Created on: August 22, 2007   Last Updated: March 03, 2010

In one sense, you can never have enough people in the world who are looking to find and expose the truth.  Both bloggers and citizen journalists should have the opportunity to get credentials so they can cover Congress the same way mainstream media journalists do. In fact, let's take this idea one step further: bloggers and citizen journalists should be able get credentials for any type of news reporting.

With all due respect to journalists who have studied and worked to get where they are today, you have had a de facto monopoly over news reporting for decades. However, you've also had an incentive to sell newspapers, television advertising, and radio advertising. Since bad news seems to attract more attention than good news, there is the potential for bias, as well as abuse of position, by "creating" news for the purpose of selling advertising.  Why not open up the field to interested individuals who aren't necessarily interested in making an income from their news reporting?

It is right and fair to open up news reporting to smaller, alternative media. Yes, this does add provide some concern to the established mass media, who lose some control over what is reported and how the news is told. However (and this is not an enjoyable thing to have to write)  it seems that mainstream news media need a check and balance over the news that they report. Independents offer a way to do this. Allowing them to get credentials would be a step towards less biased, more factual news reporting.  It would provide a more diverse range of voices, analysis, and fact finding to deal with the important news items of the day.

Perhaps the stigma that new media, as news reporters, suffer from could be mitigated, if not eliminated, by encouraging individuals to do more fact checking and critical thinking while allowing the media stranglehold to continue. However, by entertaining that line of thought you are automatically tarnishing the reputation and image of the news media by assuming that it's going to falsify the news, intentionally or otherwise.

To that comment, there is only one thing to say:  the Emperor has no clothes.  That's a damning generalization to make and it's certainly not universally accurate, but there are enough concerns out there when news broadcasts are supported by sponsors and advertisers that the world needs to be on guard for these possible conflicts of interest.

It is better to loosen the stranglehold that old media have over news distribution and give more points of view for the audience to chose from.  Checks and balances are an important part of any successful society.

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