media maven / By Marcy Burstiner

Indecent Expression

At its worst, a blog exchange is an online version of an argument between your brother the blockhead and your cousin the imbecile; each insists the other is wrong on a topic neither knows much about. Worse. On blogs, commentators rarely post their names. Instead they often hide behind unidentifiable e-mail addresses. You don’t know who they are. I grew up learning that if you don’t have something nice to say about someone, don’t say it. That sage advice disappeared with the advent of online chat technology. But can’t we at least teach our e-children this? Don’t post anything you are unwilling to tag with your name.

The idea of objectivity in the press was born with the invention of the telegraph. When we first wired the world, 19th century media moguls realized it was a waste of money for each to send reporters on the same story, when one reporter could transmit a story to every paper instantly. But to do that, they had to strip the story of any political slant.

The Internet represents the second great wiring of the world. With it, objectivity disappeared. That’s because everyone now owns the equivalent of a printing press and there is no cost to distribution. Instead of one reporter for a zillion newspapers, there are a zillion commentators for every story. Every Joe is a publisher, reporter and columnist, putting back the slant in the story. But professional journalists attach their byline to every word they write, and so they take care in selecting the words they use. Amateur bloggers don’t make money off their trade and so have no incentive to attach their names to their comments. Without names attached, people have less fear of ramifications. Read Humboldt Herald or Fred’s Humboldt Blog on any given day and you’ll find comments that appear hastily typed and posted, people saying hurtful things about other people, without the decency of signing their posts.

Kevin Hoover knows that not only will he likely face in Murphy’s market people he writes about in the Eye, but his family will as well. Same goes for Nathan Rushton and John Driscoll and Hank Sims and my students on the Lumberjack. Small-town journalism is one of the toughest professions in the world. Every mistake you make in print hits you at the gas pump. Not in the price you pay per gallon, but in the face of the people at the adjacent pumps who connect your face to your byline. Anonymous bloggers don’t have that problem. I’m all about First Amendment expression of things people don’t want to hear or see. But when you say it, paint it, sing it, play it or write it you should be prepared to back it.

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