B(V)logging vs Journalism
Interest in blogs and blogging has sharply increased in recent years. Bloggers are also frequently described as influential agenda setters. Weblogs or blogs can be described as a form of personal, easy–to–manage web sites with content presented in different forms. For instance, blogs have been found to have influence on media coverage of politics, environment, economics, as well as facilitating communication among individuals and organizations also, blog as a form of mediated human expression and blogging as a human activity is of interest to academics from a variety of disciplines.
It is a known fact that the role of the journalists is to impart the truth and help build new knowledge and experiences through the dissemination of information. Despite differing political and economic situations, journalists all over the world operate on roughly the same ground, which is to gather and impart information responsibly and with integrity whilst abiding to the code of ethics. Journalists in general have an overwhelming desire to get facts. They maintain that not only are they responsible to provide information to the public, but that their task is to provide feedback from society at large to the powers-that-be. Hence, journalists who gather and organize information for the media tend to take their responsibilities to society very seriously. They view themselves as having a sacred public mission to serve as the public’s eyes and ears and to be watchdogs on public institutions. They see their job as seeking the truth, putting it into perspective, and publishing it so that people can conduct their daily activities proficiently.
The most fundamental difference between these two is objectivity. Journalism is all about objectivity whereas blogging is more personal and can be subjective. A journalist can’t take sides if he or she is covering a story. Journalists have to give both sides of the picture without carrying an unnecessary agenda. However, bloggers don’t have such problems. If they like then they can be neutral; otherwise, they can give a twist to the story. The second major difference between blogging and journalism is the story both are covering. There is a burden on a journalist that his or her story must be genuine and he is not making it up. However, a blogger’s story can be true, but at times they can be just gossip. The line that divides these two professions is credibility. Is a story happens to be false, and then the credibility of a journalist is at stake. On the other hand, there is no consequence for a blogger even if the story or news happens to be false. Getting the source of the story or news is not just by sitting in your on your sofa wearing pajamas, you have to go out and look out of a story. That’s what journalist is trained to do. He or she goes out in the ground and ascertains more about a story. Journalist digs deep and tries to find every aspect of a story. Sources of a journalist can be anything. They have a network of people where they collect their information from. However, on the other hand, a blogger just copies a story from mainstream like TV, newspaper, radio stations, etc. and writes it. A blogger just gives a new twist to the same story sitting in his or her home. So they don’t go out in the middle like journalist.
