I will obviously be making postings out of Paris, and hope my selection will be appreciated as a European's interpretation of the American scene.

Let me begin with this remark by Rich Ord, Webpronews:

"According to Google Zeitgeist, the internet based Drudge Report is the third most searched for news source as of October, 2004. Why is this interesting? Of the top sites searched for news sources, the Drudge Report is the only Web based news service. It is significant that online news sources are now mainstream news sources when using pure popularity as the barometer. All of the others in the top five are principally television based. The Google Zeitgeist list of most popular news sources is as follows: CNN, Today Show, Drudge Report, Fox News, MSNBC..."

What is amazing about this piece of news is that very few people seem to be worried: the emergence of blogs -- not just the Drudge Report but its newer cousins such as Wonkette, InstaPundit and Daily Kos -- is now a part of the American media landscape. Organizations with hundreds of staff -- including professionally trained journalists and small armies of fact-checkers -- are now measured as equals to a single person working out of a basement. But nobody seems to care!

Shouldn't we be concerned about the state of American news when rumors and second-hand commentary become as important as breaking global events and investigative reports? And ironically, during the presidential elections, major American newspapers were almost obliged to follow the lead set by opinionated weblogs: de facto, their agenda was driven by this new cast of opinion leaders.

The second trend to emerge is the apparent lack of courage among many American editors: the only one to react with concern to this new development was John S. Carroll, The Los Angeles Times' editor, who in a prophetic lecture entitled "The Wolf in Reporter's Clothing: the Rise of Pseudo-Journalism in America" battered Fox News for a news format styled after talk radio (but a lot of his examples could be applied to the blogosphere as well).

Aside from Carroll and a small handful of others, editors in America have remained silent in response to the shifting media landscape that surrounds them.

Perhaps it's because today's blogs are so popular that nobody dares suggest that they raise more problems than they solve. I know that American editors aren't pro-blog, but I'm still waiting for a strong editorial saying that blogs are not the direction of 21st century journalism...

What does the emergence of blogs mean for European journalists and editors? Usually, our information process can be divided into four segments (fact-checking being part of the two first segments): breaking news, investigative reporting, balanced analysis and then opinion. With the bloggers, you jump directly from breaking news to opinion.

This is a major disruption and, by the way, a major misunderstanding of what journalism is: when you are articulated and well informed, it's rather easy to become an opinion giver, but it is much more difficult to fact-check the news and avoid manipulation by the government or big companies and interests. You need a staff, editors in a newsroom; all that has existed in media organizations for a century. Period.

I am, by now, perfectly aware of bloggers' arguments regarding the CBS affair concerning the "60 minutes" report about George W. Bush National Guard service. It is said that, thanks to the "guys in pajamas", truth emerged very quickly. To be frank, I'm not fully convinced. For the following reason: CBS' competitors would have done the same job, criticizing the sources and the conclusions as they usually do. But it would have taken days and days.

What is really new is that, as a case study, the collective intelligence of the blog community did the work in a few hours. It is now impossible to re-write the story as if bloggers didn't exist, but as far as we are concerned in Europe, the blog issue is only a question of timing, not a question of principle.

Bloggers, in this sense, are part of the journalistic community. As potential contributors and as accelerants -- as opinion makers as well -- not as editors or truth makers!

Another worrying issue is what could be called "American demagogy" or the "Zagat culture" and I will develop that in another posting. The syllogism is the following: blogs are popular, blogs are worthy -- instead of the so-called MSM or mainstream media -- so blogs give you the truth!

In France, you don't say a restaurant is good because it is full and seems successful. First, you try the food and second you let pass time to see if the promises are kept in the following months.

So, it is not because you have 12 million monthly visitors on Dailykos.com that it is a good site. It's certainly a successful blog, but beyond that it reveals a crisis in American public opinion. I see it as a symptom, not a cure!

Sorry if it is a bit tough, but there is no reason to accept any "religion of figures" based on the audience of some weblogs: so far, fairness and accuracy are not indexed by Google technology!

It's more or less the same story about the "We Media" concept and we will discuss that later in "What's wrong with American journalism?

-- Bertrand Pecquerie is the Director of the World Editors Forum.

© MediaChannel.org, 2004. All rights reserved.

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