Sunday, August 15, 2010
Blogs in Journalism
OPEN UNIVERSITY MALAYSIA
FACULTY OF APPLIED SOCIAL SCIENCES (FASS)
BASIC JOURNALISM (CBFJ 2103)
Semester: MAY 2010
Name/Matric No : Mariam Binti Abdullah/7712047151780001
Email address : mariam@irda.com.my
Tutor’s name : Encik Mohammad Firdaus Abdul Hamid
Learning Centre : Johor Learning Centre
Date of submission : 14th August 2010
CONTENT
NO TITLE
1 Introduction
2 Advantages of blogs
3 Disadvantages of blogs
4 Conclusion
5 References
1.0 Abstract
The purpose of this report written is to explain the definition of blogs ,the difference that blogs have made in the news organization particularly to the journalists who are seeking out the truth for the publics.In addition, the advantages and disadvantages of blogs featuring issues such as rumours, trust as well as reliability will be discussed in this paper.Besides that , laws that are being implemented by The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MMC) for online activities such as blogs which will affect the journalists will also be illustrated in this paper.
In order to support the above statements, this blog explores references from databases from the official website of The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (SKMM), reference books, research papers and The Star newspaper press release. The data were collected from analytical scrutiny hence; the results were finalized due to the written record of references.
1.1 Introduction
Based on the definition of Weblog or blog in short form in Merriam Webster online dictionary (2010), “is a website that contains an online personal journal with reflections,comments , and often hyperlinks provided by the writer ;also:the contents of such a site”. In other words, blogs enable users to post their feelings,news, life as well as work experiences in the templates which have been designed in the website.
The blogs are cited most frequently by journalists and professionals who are keen to update on their organization’s stories and links “primarily to news about current events (Sengupta. A. 2006 P53-59).
As illustrated by SKMM (Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission) in The Star newspaper dated 27th September 2007, “there is no censorship in the Internet but journalists have to ensure that the contents will not be obscene, indecent, menacing or offensive..”. This shows that Malaysia Government has given much freedom to the publics and journalists to use blogs as alternative media for news but they must not abuse the freedom by writing offensive articles such as insulting the royalty or creating racial unrest issues in the country.
There are two types of blogs available which are mainly the filter and free style. Filter style links to the respective website or featured articles that facilitate users to post their feedbacks or comments on the articles posted in the website. This is an added advantage for journalists who normally will do their news reports which link out to numerous of primary resources due to the modern development of technology,blogs are develop with hypertexts.On the other hand, free style features more on the internal world of the users such as updating their weddings, newborn babies and personal lives.
With the development of the distribution method of “Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary” (RSS) included in Blogger and Word Press enable journalists to aggregate all postings from other bloggers to form their personal news service instead of checking the blog itself randomly to look out for latest updates. Another development is “crowdsourcing” whereby individual elements of a particular project is spread between members of a particular community. In other words, by social networking in this way enables journalists are able spread their stories more rapidly in contrast in the newsroom.
2.0 Advantages of blogs
As illustrated by Harrison.J (2006), “bloggers are often eyewitnesses to events, able to offer a live account of events” indicates that journalists aka bloggers are able to provide readers detailed and accurate news contrast to the printed media such as newspapers.
According to Modeling Malaysian Public Opinion by Mining the Malaysian Blogosphere, Pg.3, Ulicny B (2008) stated that a veteran journalists, Ahiruddin Attan otherwise known Rocky Bru is famous for his blogspot “rockybru.blogspot.com. “Attan averages about 1.9 posts per day. His blog attracted inlinks from 488 unique sites in last 90 days with 3082 trackbacks” which shown that users of blogs found his blog reliable to be the medium of news updates and feedbacks.
As blogs are the quickest way online media, journalists find it a better alternative to cascade news instantly rather than posting them fully online. This is further supported by Niblock.S (2010 pg 96. ), “political journalists and policy advisors suggesting it (Twitter post) is a tool for media elite rather than computer geeks” whereby during a major earthquake in China, there were already posts from the local people in the Twitter relaying the news before the news appeared in the CNN one hour later.
The technology of linkbacks will alert bloggers when users link their post. Normally, bloggers will specify the websites that they have obtained references from and will attach a link to the website in their posts. Besides that, links will compromise of feedbacks of a certain post which will enable bloggers to feature any debates or responses thus this permits users to response and continue the discussion in the original blog post. Similar to web conferencing, the bloggers are informed of the other users opinions and identities as well as able to debate, updating facts, and rectifying mistakes.
According to Harrison.J(2006 p.76), “BBC online is one of the popular sites in Europe” which is similar to our local newspaper online, NST (New Straits Times) and The Star which also include Malaysiakini . The online newspapers have a number of blogs in their website and allow users indicate their comments in the column provided which the journalists will respond back to the users . This is use through the RSS reader technology which allows the journalists to check for any new postings as well as forming their personal news service by including the blog feed.
In addition, the journalists are able to insert pictures from mobile phones or digital cameras online in their blogs which is an added advantage as these pictures can be utilize to enhance the news which allow the journalists to discover the news further. Apart from that, journalists are also able to use the unlimited resources from the Internet to add in their respective blogs to relate with addition to their eyewitness account stories to convey their news further to the other users.
Besides that, journalists are able to generate profits through the initiation services such as Adsense, BlogAds and Goggle,search engine. This is due to the frequent link of blogs, the incoming links plus it’s ranking to the webpage has made blog to be the foremost aspect for their news updates.Stories which are blogged frequently will benefit from a popular search engine such as Google which oversees the famous terms and sites.
In comparison to the other mainstream news organization,well known blogs such as Boing Boing and the Daily Kos which have the largest number of visitors are among the blogs which have been started by amateur journalists bloggers who then hire full time employees to manage the website.
Due to the importance of blogs to explore engine ranking, the blog format technology has been implemented by news organizations for the journalists and online advertising income users. However, some of the specific qualities of the blogs have been reduced as some journalists have disable feedbacks as well as link backs, the failure to link to the origin resources. On top of that, blogs have also become the new means for traditional print content otherwise known as “shovelware” which will be further discussed in the disadvantage of blogs.
3.0 Disadvantages of blogs
According to Basic Journalism Open University module (Mus & Faridah, 2006),in Malaysia, journalists have to observe the Penal Code Section 298A which indicate that journalists or bloggers must not do “acts that cause disharmony,disunity, enmity and hatred on religious grounds either through words spoken or written ……”.
In other words, contents in their respective blogs must not caused racial unrest, causing riots and creates controversial issues such as religion in this country as nowadays some the blogs featured are biased, ill opinions and lack of “editorial rigour” which is a disadvantage to the users who will start being racist towards one another and posting feedbacks on racial issues.
Blogs having “unchecked” in nature can be deceptive as in comparison to the normal environment in newsroom, editors will examine all reports such as press releases and spokepersons before publishing but on other hand, blogs have reverse the processes which will eventually starts from writing all the contents in the blogs and follow by checking when all other bloggers will examine the facts after reading the blogs.
Besides that ,the contents in blogs contain mostly unfinished products, editing, updates by the bloggers themselves unlike in newsroom all contents are normally drafted in the first place and timelines for the news will be given by the editor to the journalists.
In one of the acts in Sedition Act 1948 (Act 15) whereby journalists are supposed to observe is that their articles must not “ To bring hatred or contempt or excites dissatisfaction against any Ruler or government.”. Failure to observe the acts, journalists will face defamation legal suits. An example as illustrated by Ulicny.(2008), “Police complaints have been filed against blogs for allegedly insulting Islam and the King of Malaysia, the elected monarch.”
The government restricts on what journalists opinions about the government and the ethnic groups in Malaysia and therefore journalists have lack of freedom of to voice out their opinions. This is further proven by Ulicny.B. (2008), “In 2007, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the respected journalism watchdog group, ranked Malaysia 124th out of 169 countries surveyed in its 2007 Press Freedom Index” where Malaysia government preserve freedom of speech to journalists.
Besides that, Malaysia government also practices Official Secrets Act 1972 (Act 88) whereby “official secrets” related to documents , information and material classified as “Top Secret”, “Confidential””Restricted” must not be released without prior approval. This is critical to all journalists as most of the journalists have first hand information pertaining the rulers or law makers thus it is essential for them to abide this law.
Similar to the above act, journalists who do not abide the law will be detained under Official Secrets Act. This is support when another blogger was detained for posting a doctored photo of the deputy Prime Minister (Ulcny,2008) which is a disadvantage as blogs are still not monitored securely till all confidential documents are freely distributed.
Due to the rise of the corporate culture, the newsroom ethics in journalists have began to decline as a result of their organization’s objective to reduce cost saving and the same time able to provide the latest news . For instance, while under-resourced newsroom have faced criticism for running unedited PR videos (Henry,2007). In addition, investigative journalism specifically has been criticized for allowing sources to set agendas (Feldstein,2007).
An example is when bloggers are accused of an official newspaper of plagiarizing a well known novelist in an editorial ( Ulicny,2008). In this incident, the bloggers have gone against the Defamation Act 1957 (Act 286) whereby they have done a defamation of publishing a statement about a person that tends to lower his (her) reputation in the opinion of right thinking members of the community or to make them shun or avoid him (her).
4.0 Conclusion
As discussed earlier, journalists in this era have begun using blogs as an electronic media to provide first hand eyewitness account stories and with the latest technology of Internet, RSS feed.They are also able to insert pictures,link the videos from Youtube using the search engine of Google to enhance their news in their blogs. Besides that, the readers of their respective blogs are able to send comments and thus the journalists are able to reply their comments.
Blogs are able to update news faster compared to newsroom where it was illustrated earlier that during an earthquake in China when CNN announced the news an hour after the news was updated in the blogs worldwide.
According to Ulcny (2008), “blog posts are not standalone documents” therefore journalists should take note of all information that they retrieve, the contents and the feedbacks that they have written in their blogs. It is important to know the relevance of the blog post which is influenced by reference and texts of the post as well as news articles.
In addition, the timeliness of the blog post should be in comparison with the date of the publication of the cited news article. The timelines should be close to the related events. The number of high profile people featured in the news article reflect the specificity of the blog post as users will pay more attention in nature especially when these people are high officials in the country such as local Ministers in Malaysia which will create a “domain ontology”.
Besides that, journalists should ensure the credibility of their blog posts by enhancing their blogs by using their own real names , attract non spam feedbacks and linking their blogs to a trustworthy news outlets such as local Malaysia online newspaper should be link to CNN, BBC.
Above all, as discussed, there are also disadvantages of blogs to the journalists. In comparison to the newsroom, official sources are not used for blogs.Journalists normally depend on such as the press releases and spokesperson in newsroom. Even though laws and acts have been implemented by the Malaysia government, the bloggers still practice the freedom of speech in their blogs without fear of being issue defamation legal suits. Several cases such as police complaints have been made for blog posts insulting Islam and the King of Malaysia which has been discussed earlier.
5.0 References
1. Harrison.J (2006). The modern news technology,regulation,concentration and competition : News, Pg 76- 80.
2. Mus Chairil .S & Faridah.I (2006). Media & The Laws: CBFC 2103 Basic Journalism, Pg 357-375
3. Niblock.S (2010). “We are all content providers now”: Journalism, Pg 95-97
4. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.(2010).Retrieved June 14, 2010, from http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/blog
5. The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission.Retrieved June 12, 2010, from http://www.skmm.gov.my/index.php?c=public&v=art_view &art_id=347.
6. Bradshaw.P (2007,October 24). The amateur –professional debate: Blogs and Investigative Journalism. Retrieved August 9,2010 from http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2007/10/24/blogs-and-investigativejournalism-the-amateur-professional-debate/
7. Ulicny.B (2008). Background: The Malaysia Blogosphere.Journal of Modeling Malaysian Public Opinion by Mining The Malaysian Blogosphere.Retrieved August 11,2010 from http://vistology.com/papers/VISSBP08%20.pdf
FACULTY OF APPLIED SOCIAL SCIENCES (FASS)
BASIC JOURNALISM (CBFJ 2103)
Semester: MAY 2010
Name/Matric No : Mariam Binti Abdullah/7712047151780001
Email address : mariam@irda.com.my
Tutor’s name : Encik Mohammad Firdaus Abdul Hamid
Learning Centre : Johor Learning Centre
Date of submission : 14th August 2010
CONTENT
NO TITLE
1 Introduction
2 Advantages of blogs
3 Disadvantages of blogs
4 Conclusion
5 References
1.0 Abstract
The purpose of this report written is to explain the definition of blogs ,the difference that blogs have made in the news organization particularly to the journalists who are seeking out the truth for the publics.In addition, the advantages and disadvantages of blogs featuring issues such as rumours, trust as well as reliability will be discussed in this paper.Besides that , laws that are being implemented by The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MMC) for online activities such as blogs which will affect the journalists will also be illustrated in this paper.
In order to support the above statements, this blog explores references from databases from the official website of The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (SKMM), reference books, research papers and The Star newspaper press release. The data were collected from analytical scrutiny hence; the results were finalized due to the written record of references.
1.1 Introduction
Based on the definition of Weblog or blog in short form in Merriam Webster online dictionary (2010), “is a website that contains an online personal journal with reflections,comments , and often hyperlinks provided by the writer ;also:the contents of such a site”. In other words, blogs enable users to post their feelings,news, life as well as work experiences in the templates which have been designed in the website.
The blogs are cited most frequently by journalists and professionals who are keen to update on their organization’s stories and links “primarily to news about current events (Sengupta. A. 2006 P53-59).
As illustrated by SKMM (Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission) in The Star newspaper dated 27th September 2007, “there is no censorship in the Internet but journalists have to ensure that the contents will not be obscene, indecent, menacing or offensive..”. This shows that Malaysia Government has given much freedom to the publics and journalists to use blogs as alternative media for news but they must not abuse the freedom by writing offensive articles such as insulting the royalty or creating racial unrest issues in the country.
There are two types of blogs available which are mainly the filter and free style. Filter style links to the respective website or featured articles that facilitate users to post their feedbacks or comments on the articles posted in the website. This is an added advantage for journalists who normally will do their news reports which link out to numerous of primary resources due to the modern development of technology,blogs are develop with hypertexts.On the other hand, free style features more on the internal world of the users such as updating their weddings, newborn babies and personal lives.
With the development of the distribution method of “Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary” (RSS) included in Blogger and Word Press enable journalists to aggregate all postings from other bloggers to form their personal news service instead of checking the blog itself randomly to look out for latest updates. Another development is “crowdsourcing” whereby individual elements of a particular project is spread between members of a particular community. In other words, by social networking in this way enables journalists are able spread their stories more rapidly in contrast in the newsroom.
2.0 Advantages of blogs
As illustrated by Harrison.J (2006), “bloggers are often eyewitnesses to events, able to offer a live account of events” indicates that journalists aka bloggers are able to provide readers detailed and accurate news contrast to the printed media such as newspapers.
According to Modeling Malaysian Public Opinion by Mining the Malaysian Blogosphere, Pg.3, Ulicny B (2008) stated that a veteran journalists, Ahiruddin Attan otherwise known Rocky Bru is famous for his blogspot “rockybru.blogspot.com. “Attan averages about 1.9 posts per day. His blog attracted inlinks from 488 unique sites in last 90 days with 3082 trackbacks” which shown that users of blogs found his blog reliable to be the medium of news updates and feedbacks.
As blogs are the quickest way online media, journalists find it a better alternative to cascade news instantly rather than posting them fully online. This is further supported by Niblock.S (2010 pg 96. ), “political journalists and policy advisors suggesting it (Twitter post) is a tool for media elite rather than computer geeks” whereby during a major earthquake in China, there were already posts from the local people in the Twitter relaying the news before the news appeared in the CNN one hour later.
The technology of linkbacks will alert bloggers when users link their post. Normally, bloggers will specify the websites that they have obtained references from and will attach a link to the website in their posts. Besides that, links will compromise of feedbacks of a certain post which will enable bloggers to feature any debates or responses thus this permits users to response and continue the discussion in the original blog post. Similar to web conferencing, the bloggers are informed of the other users opinions and identities as well as able to debate, updating facts, and rectifying mistakes.
According to Harrison.J(2006 p.76), “BBC online is one of the popular sites in Europe” which is similar to our local newspaper online, NST (New Straits Times) and The Star which also include Malaysiakini . The online newspapers have a number of blogs in their website and allow users indicate their comments in the column provided which the journalists will respond back to the users . This is use through the RSS reader technology which allows the journalists to check for any new postings as well as forming their personal news service by including the blog feed.
In addition, the journalists are able to insert pictures from mobile phones or digital cameras online in their blogs which is an added advantage as these pictures can be utilize to enhance the news which allow the journalists to discover the news further. Apart from that, journalists are also able to use the unlimited resources from the Internet to add in their respective blogs to relate with addition to their eyewitness account stories to convey their news further to the other users.
Besides that, journalists are able to generate profits through the initiation services such as Adsense, BlogAds and Goggle,search engine. This is due to the frequent link of blogs, the incoming links plus it’s ranking to the webpage has made blog to be the foremost aspect for their news updates.Stories which are blogged frequently will benefit from a popular search engine such as Google which oversees the famous terms and sites.
In comparison to the other mainstream news organization,well known blogs such as Boing Boing and the Daily Kos which have the largest number of visitors are among the blogs which have been started by amateur journalists bloggers who then hire full time employees to manage the website.
Due to the importance of blogs to explore engine ranking, the blog format technology has been implemented by news organizations for the journalists and online advertising income users. However, some of the specific qualities of the blogs have been reduced as some journalists have disable feedbacks as well as link backs, the failure to link to the origin resources. On top of that, blogs have also become the new means for traditional print content otherwise known as “shovelware” which will be further discussed in the disadvantage of blogs.
3.0 Disadvantages of blogs
According to Basic Journalism Open University module (Mus & Faridah, 2006),in Malaysia, journalists have to observe the Penal Code Section 298A which indicate that journalists or bloggers must not do “acts that cause disharmony,disunity, enmity and hatred on religious grounds either through words spoken or written ……”.
In other words, contents in their respective blogs must not caused racial unrest, causing riots and creates controversial issues such as religion in this country as nowadays some the blogs featured are biased, ill opinions and lack of “editorial rigour” which is a disadvantage to the users who will start being racist towards one another and posting feedbacks on racial issues.
Blogs having “unchecked” in nature can be deceptive as in comparison to the normal environment in newsroom, editors will examine all reports such as press releases and spokepersons before publishing but on other hand, blogs have reverse the processes which will eventually starts from writing all the contents in the blogs and follow by checking when all other bloggers will examine the facts after reading the blogs.
Besides that ,the contents in blogs contain mostly unfinished products, editing, updates by the bloggers themselves unlike in newsroom all contents are normally drafted in the first place and timelines for the news will be given by the editor to the journalists.
In one of the acts in Sedition Act 1948 (Act 15) whereby journalists are supposed to observe is that their articles must not “ To bring hatred or contempt or excites dissatisfaction against any Ruler or government.”. Failure to observe the acts, journalists will face defamation legal suits. An example as illustrated by Ulicny.(2008), “Police complaints have been filed against blogs for allegedly insulting Islam and the King of Malaysia, the elected monarch.”
The government restricts on what journalists opinions about the government and the ethnic groups in Malaysia and therefore journalists have lack of freedom of to voice out their opinions. This is further proven by Ulicny.B. (2008), “In 2007, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the respected journalism watchdog group, ranked Malaysia 124th out of 169 countries surveyed in its 2007 Press Freedom Index” where Malaysia government preserve freedom of speech to journalists.
Besides that, Malaysia government also practices Official Secrets Act 1972 (Act 88) whereby “official secrets” related to documents , information and material classified as “Top Secret”, “Confidential””Restricted” must not be released without prior approval. This is critical to all journalists as most of the journalists have first hand information pertaining the rulers or law makers thus it is essential for them to abide this law.
Similar to the above act, journalists who do not abide the law will be detained under Official Secrets Act. This is support when another blogger was detained for posting a doctored photo of the deputy Prime Minister (Ulcny,2008) which is a disadvantage as blogs are still not monitored securely till all confidential documents are freely distributed.
Due to the rise of the corporate culture, the newsroom ethics in journalists have began to decline as a result of their organization’s objective to reduce cost saving and the same time able to provide the latest news . For instance, while under-resourced newsroom have faced criticism for running unedited PR videos (Henry,2007). In addition, investigative journalism specifically has been criticized for allowing sources to set agendas (Feldstein,2007).
An example is when bloggers are accused of an official newspaper of plagiarizing a well known novelist in an editorial ( Ulicny,2008). In this incident, the bloggers have gone against the Defamation Act 1957 (Act 286) whereby they have done a defamation of publishing a statement about a person that tends to lower his (her) reputation in the opinion of right thinking members of the community or to make them shun or avoid him (her).
4.0 Conclusion
As discussed earlier, journalists in this era have begun using blogs as an electronic media to provide first hand eyewitness account stories and with the latest technology of Internet, RSS feed.They are also able to insert pictures,link the videos from Youtube using the search engine of Google to enhance their news in their blogs. Besides that, the readers of their respective blogs are able to send comments and thus the journalists are able to reply their comments.
Blogs are able to update news faster compared to newsroom where it was illustrated earlier that during an earthquake in China when CNN announced the news an hour after the news was updated in the blogs worldwide.
According to Ulcny (2008), “blog posts are not standalone documents” therefore journalists should take note of all information that they retrieve, the contents and the feedbacks that they have written in their blogs. It is important to know the relevance of the blog post which is influenced by reference and texts of the post as well as news articles.
In addition, the timeliness of the blog post should be in comparison with the date of the publication of the cited news article. The timelines should be close to the related events. The number of high profile people featured in the news article reflect the specificity of the blog post as users will pay more attention in nature especially when these people are high officials in the country such as local Ministers in Malaysia which will create a “domain ontology”.
Besides that, journalists should ensure the credibility of their blog posts by enhancing their blogs by using their own real names , attract non spam feedbacks and linking their blogs to a trustworthy news outlets such as local Malaysia online newspaper should be link to CNN, BBC.
Above all, as discussed, there are also disadvantages of blogs to the journalists. In comparison to the newsroom, official sources are not used for blogs.Journalists normally depend on such as the press releases and spokesperson in newsroom. Even though laws and acts have been implemented by the Malaysia government, the bloggers still practice the freedom of speech in their blogs without fear of being issue defamation legal suits. Several cases such as police complaints have been made for blog posts insulting Islam and the King of Malaysia which has been discussed earlier.
5.0 References
1. Harrison.J (2006). The modern news technology,regulation,concentration and competition : News, Pg 76- 80.
2. Mus Chairil .S & Faridah.I (2006). Media & The Laws: CBFC 2103 Basic Journalism, Pg 357-375
3. Niblock.S (2010). “We are all content providers now”: Journalism, Pg 95-97
4. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.(2010).Retrieved June 14, 2010, from http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/blog
5. The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission.Retrieved June 12, 2010, from http://www.skmm.gov.my/index.php?c=public&v=art_view &art_id=347.
6. Bradshaw.P (2007,October 24). The amateur –professional debate: Blogs and Investigative Journalism. Retrieved August 9,2010 from http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2007/10/24/blogs-and-investigativejournalism-the-amateur-professional-debate/
7. Ulicny.B (2008). Background: The Malaysia Blogosphere.Journal of Modeling Malaysian Public Opinion by Mining The Malaysian Blogosphere.Retrieved August 11,2010 from http://vistology.com/papers/VISSBP08%20.pdf
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)