TMV NOTE: Since we’ve added a major update, we’re moving this previous post to the top of this site. Please scroll down for newer posts.
Jill Carroll was twice a victim – once of jihadist terrorists who kidnapped her and once of a culture that sought to exploit her tragedy to satisfy personal ambition and ego. Shame on us all for allowing this to happen.
–Rick Moran, Right Wing Nut House
So now former hostage Jill Carroll is free from captivity. And now the Christian Science Monitor reporter has issued a statement that years ago would have been unthinkable for a hostage who had made a statement under duress (it has now come out that she made it AT GUNPOINT) to feel COMPELLED to issue: a statement stressing that, no she didn’t really mean the propagandistic words her captors made her say if she valued her life.
Unthinkable in most cases if you go back in history. But necessary in 2006. Why?
The era of the shoot-your-keyboard-first and see-if-its-accurate later (and do it in a way that makes a political point you make on your site so it fits in with your ongoing narrative) is upon us.
Do the three paragraphs above merely refelct the views of what one unfriendly fellow blogger called a “mushy” (code word for “you don’t agree with my agenda”) moderate? Well, no, because today, thoughtful conservatives who held their fire rather than try to automatically condemn are now asking the same question — and bluntly, too. Note the comments by Ed Morrissey below.
And now there’s this must read post by Right Wing Nut House’s Rick Moran — who truly must rename his site (as he should have long ago) because it’s one of the most thoughtful and pointed examinations of the Carroll case and what it means to the new medium of blogs.
It’s worth looking and commenting extensively on major excerpts of this piece, since it’s so remarkable and nails it:
I will not name names nor link to bloggers who thought the worst of Miss Carroll. They and their readers know who they are and I trust they will be suitably chastised. And if they have an ounce of integrity, they will write a public apology.
It’ll be interesting to see if this happens. But don’t bet your house on it. Because what most bloggers don’t care to totally admit is this:
Weblogs are an incredible opportunity. Today, anyone can now become a journalist, an investigative reporter, and editor and a publisher. They don’t have to navigate themselves through corporate and office politics to become a commentator. They don’t have to kowtow to a corporation to get their info and views published. All it takes is a computer and a blogsite. And, to a certain extent, having no shame.
Which is what we have seen in the Jill Carroll case.
Despite the incredibible journalistic and informational potential of blogs, weblogs in the early 21st Century have evolved into extended op-ed pages, with occasional smatterings of original reporting and research. There’s nothing wrong with that.
But blogs have also emerged as a kind of cyberspace talk radio where judgments are faster than traditional “snap” judgments, supposition is angrily expressed as utter certainty, demonization is the rule, and some sites are so fixed on promoting personal political agendas and world views that they lose sight of the value of a bit of restraint before politically pigeonholing someone.
Somehow, the idea of taking seriously a fact or idea that does not conform to a world view sometimes simply does not compute. MORE:
The speed and ferocity with which people piled on Miss Carroll for not immediately disavowing her propaganda statement as well as her first statements to the press which seemed to give her brutal captors a pass reminded me of the jaw-dropping way the left pounced on the Administration in the immediate – and by immediate I mean that lefty bloggers were screaming “incompetence� less than 24 hours after hurricane winds had died down in New Orleans – aftermath of Katrina. The point isn’t to bash the left here but to highlight a problem with blogs that seems to be presenting itself with alarming regularity.
In people’s haste to be first, or different, or just plain ornery and contrary (all the better to get links and readers) a culture of “shoot first and ask questions later� has arisen in the blogosphere that quite frankly, is proving every bad thing that the MSM has been saying about blogs from the beginning. Many of us – including myself – have been guilty in the past of hitting that “Publish� button when perhaps it would have been prudent and proper to take a beat or two to think about what we just wrote and the impact it might have beyond the small little world we inhabit in this corner of Blogland.
The impact of blogs, in fact, hasn’t been shown to be huge in terms of moving political mountains (yet). But the impact of blogs CAN on those about whom blogs are writing.
Apart from that, there is the huge issue of credibility.
If each time a weblog screeches that X person hates America or X person is a fascist it gets kind of old — unless you are a member of a choir that wants to hear the same song over and over. There’s nothing wrong with that — but it does NOT enhance the credibility of blogs.
Do blogs want to be news analyzers? Opinion shapers? Political influencers? Or do they want to become like the very worst extreme left and extreme right talk show hosts? If the choice is the latter, then why shouldn’t the news media view blogs as a written by a bunch of hyperactive political activists who want to get their harsh opinions out there first no matter what so they attract attention to themselves? MORE:
Scalp hunting has become the national pastime of blogs. Both lefty and righty lodgepoles have some pretty impressive trophies hanging on them; Dan Rather, Mary Mapes (twice), Eason Jordon, Trent Lott, Ben Domenech, to name a few more noteworthy ones.
But is this what we are? Is this what we are becoming? Are we nothing more than a pack of digital yellow journalists writing pixelated scab sheets vying to see who we can lay low next? If this be the way to fame and fortune in the blogosphere, I truly fear that, like television, the last great technological breakthrough that promised to change the world, we will degenerate into a mindless, bottomless pit of muck and mudslinging, dragging down the culture and trivializing even the most important issues.
To be sure, blogs are now providing many functions. You can find some truly thoughtful ones (which DOES include some ideological and partisan ones). It depends on how blogs are perceived. Are they to express the innermost, unabashed thoughts (unabashed by facts or accuracy)? Are they primarily useful as tools for political activists to rally like-minded individuals, raise funds, help solidify an ideological world view and link together specific political communities?
All of that is fine. But blogs have DEMANDED that they be perceived as MORE: as somehow similar to the mainstream media or in some cases better.
In that view, the Carroll case, and the fact she had to issue a statement asking for understanding and to be left alone to heal, cannot be viewed as anything but a setback for a growing perception of bloggers as being capable of justifiably bringing down a political fraud and demanding high media standards but also prone to indulging in a kind of frenzied political group rape. MORE:
This is no idle concern that can be dismissed as the nature of the beast or the way of the world. This kind of thing has to be stopped, an admitted impossibility with 29 million blogs out there. Maybe it’s enough that we are aware of it and that people of good faith and good intentions will, in the end, marginalize the muckrakers and come out on top. Don’t count on it.
But it can be done if people also take a bit more care to make sure denouncing someone is justified. A few things:
- Use common sense when posting. This isn’t censorship. Instead of definitively stating something as a fact or likely fact when there’s no evidence wait until there are some facts. Because a blogger say someone hates America or is a fascist doesn’t make it so.
- There’s a REASON why journalist use hedge words like “could be” or “one possibility is” or “it’s possible that.” Sometimes something that seems crystal clear is NOT if you look at it and take a deep breath.
- Do weblog writers want to be considered analysts with edgy commentary whose views should be taken seriously or people who are constantly outraged and on the attack (even against each other)? It’s a choice every person who writes a weblog writes with each post they do. A little bit of thought never hurt. For instance, when someone posts a screaming, adjective-filled entry putting labels on someone does that writer realize that his post is now recorded for posterity on the Internet? It’s not just a matter of short term (that story) credibility, but overall (your body of work with your name on it) credibility.
The late, great George Burns once said:””The secret of acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
You can fake sincerity.
But you can’t fake credibility. You earn it.
And today some blogs and blogging in general need to re-earn it.
UPDATE: Polimom has a take on this, too which includes this tidbit:
Folks, everybody makes mistakes, and many bloggers have passed early judment to their chagrin – including me. It’s rare, though, to see a personal smear campaign on this scale, and it should remind all of us that responsibility comes along with public discourse – even in this “newâ€? medium.
LATEST UPDATE: Although many conservative bloggers have responded to the new info on Carroll and run clarifications or what are in effect apologies, some haven’t. And one of the most glaring examples is Debbie Schlussel, who was and remains one of Carroll’s harshest critics.
Respected journalism professor and media blogger Jay Rosen, whose site Press Think is a MUST for those interested in press issues and blogging as a new news form, writes in an email: “Debbie Schlussel….is demanding that people apologize to her, Debbie! And she erased the comments I left at her blog in this thread……advising her to compose a statement apologizing to Carroll and her family. If you read the thread, you can see the references to my comments.I don’t think that’s ever happened to me, the erasing of comments. They were not rude or offensive.”
So now, Rosen reports in another email, he has submitted this comment — to see if it could get on her site:
Hi Debbie. I see you didn’t take my advice, which is your perogative of course. I am interested in your new demand that people apologize to you. That would cover Jim Geraghty, I’m guessing, and for sure Rick Moran.
I just want to know: who else should be included in the apology owed to Debbie Schlussel? Any other names in that category? I have a feeling your campaign for an apology will get a lot of publicity, so it would be good to have a full list. Thanks.
Also, if you could, why did you erase my comments at your earlier thread? They were polite and reasoned. I didn’t launch any personal attacks. I just advised you to apologize to Jill Carroll and her family, and retract statements like this:
“Is Jill Carroll endorsing the Iraqi Islamic Party? Sure looks like it (see below). So nice that she likes them more than her loyal translator, who was murdered by her “kind and generous� kidnappers….�
where you jumped the gun and didn’t realize her statement was coerced. Many thanks.
Meanwhile, in THIS NEW POST she blasts the “blind worshippers of Jill Carroll” and goes through a series of tidbits in order to support a continuing attack on Carroll.
In comments, at the bottom of her post, some readers suggest this is a kind of apology. (Read it yourself).
Her point is that she was right on all the things she originally said. Now, we’re sure that Debbie Schlussel’s website will get tons of readership from those who simply want to read something attacking a reporter or the media. It’ll get many links in the future. Some readers and bloggers won’t mind that there isn’t an attempt at a clarifiction, a hedge word, or the slightest regret for the earlier posts.
Instead, she writes:”As for any calls for an apology, the apology is owed to ME by all the premature articulators out there who didn’t read closely and falsely claimed I cited the video. I did not. Jill Carroll’s views and Islamist, terror-supporting friends in the U.S. remain the same. Time for all of you to get LASIK so you finally see it.”
Or, many readers and writers of thoughtful weblogs on the right, left and center, might think it’s time for Ms. Schlussel to get some glasses and read how her posts on Carroll in general come across, particularly these new ones.
Even if some of the things she cites were true, would it prove that Carroll was on the same wavelength as her captors? No.
Many thoughtful bloggers on the right, left and center who now feel Carroll was wronged might feel it’s simply time to move on and make it a point of not helping increase the readership of such pap (we forgot the “c”).
You don’t have to be a “worshipper” of Jill Carroll to feel she got a raw deal. You just have to be a compassionate human being. And most people who are saying she was wronged, aren’t her worshippers. Isn’t it time to look at new information, consider it and put pigeonholing and relentless demonization based on a whole bunch of suppositions and assumptions aside — even if for a minute or two? Which is what most bloggers are, in fact, doing.
PS: It’s not difficult apologizing. We did IT HERE.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, writes a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.