[Mb-civic] Bloggers owe Carroll an apology - Ellen Goodman - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  Bloggers owe Carroll an apology

By Ellen Goodman  |  April 7, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

I AM SURE that Jill Carroll and her family are too busy inhaling the 
sweet spring air of freedom to spend time sniffing out the pollution in 
the blogosphere. Anyone who spent three months imagining the grimmest 
fate for this young journalist in the hands of terrorists can't get too 
upset when a little Internet posse goes after her scalp.

Nevertheless, this is not a good moment for the bustling, energetic Wild 
West of the new Internet media. Remember when a former CBS executive 
described bloggers as guys in pajamas writing in their living rooms? 
Well, it seems that many have only one exercise routine: jumping to 
conclusions.

In the hours between captivity and true freedom, Carroll was seen in one 
propaganda film describing the mujahideen as ''good people fighting an 
honorable fight" and in another interview saying she was never 
threatened. An online jeering section bought it hook, line, and sinker 
without waiting to hear that the videos were made under threat. As Alex 
Jones of Harvard's Shorenstein Center said, ''They were gulled by a 
clever piece of propaganda and ought to be ashamed of themselves."

The printouts on my desk describe the 28-year-old journalist, a hostage 
and victim for 82 terrifying days, as something between Patty Hearst and 
Baghdad Jane, between a traitor and ''Princess Jill." TBone posted a 
potshot, calling Carroll ''a liar" and the kidnapping ''a total scam." 
PA Pundits said that ''I still just can't get past her being (for the 
most part) unharmed." And Debbie Schlussel called her a ''spoiled brat 
America-hater."

The blogosphere was not the only source of pollution. Indeed, the 
oil-spill prize goes to Don Imus's producer, Bernard McGuirk, who 
described this young reporter as ''the kind of woman who would wear one 
of those suicide vests. . . . She may be carrying Habib's baby." But in 
the short, volatile, and powerful life of the Web log, the Jill Carroll 
debacle may be a turning point.

Web logs have been around barely a half-dozen years. The Pew Internet & 
American Life Project estimates that a quarter of Internet users now 
read blogs and 9 percent write one. Most of the 28 million blogs are 
online diaries such as those on MySpace. But there is also the feisty 
political corner of this zone.

The political bloggers first flexed their muscle in 2002 when they 
trumped the MSM -- blogspeak for Mainstream Media -- by forcing Trent 
Lott out of the Senate speakership after he toasted the good old 
segregated days of Strom Thurmond. In 2004, they proved the power of the 
Internet as a great equalizer when they confronted the house of CBS and 
Dan Rather over Bush's military records.

Two years later, we have -- ready, fire, aim -- the Jill Carroll affair. 
These attacks raise the question of what bloggery is going to be when it 
grows up. An Internet op-ed page? Or a polarized, talk-radio food fight?

As Internet users, we've learned a lot about the good, the bad, the 
true, and the false in cyberspace. If you Google an illness, you get 
links to a cutting-edge cure for cancer or a website for pills made from 
apricot pits. Dan Gillmor, author of ''We the Media," says that ''people 
are having to learn a new kind of media literacy" and that ''quality 
will end up surfacing." Maybe so. Maybe not.

If newspapers are the first rough draft of history, a blog is like 
reading a never-ending draft as it's being written and published, mostly 
unedited, without standards or correction boxes. Defenders will tell you 
that blogs are ''fact-checked" in the rough and tumble of the 
marketplace by other bloggers. But don't count on it.

The difference between old media and new, MSM and blog, says Al Tompkins 
of the Poynter Institute, is the difference between sitting at a 
restaurant and having your food delivered nicely plated or standing at a 
buffet nibbling constantly. It's the 24/7 news cycle brought down to the 
604,800 seconds-per-week cycle.

In the wake of the Carroll story, a few -- far too few -- bloggers 
stopped stocking the buffet long enough to eat their words. But this 
case provides a juncture for bloggers who want a respected role in the 
public debate.

It has already provoked something rather rare in the blogosphere: soul 
searching. Rick Moran, the self-named Right Wing Nut House, asks: ''Are 
we nothing more than a pack of digital yellow journalists writing 
pixilated scab sheets vying to see who we can lay low next?" Joe 
Gandelman of The Moderate Voice warns: ''You can't fake credibility. You 
earn it. And today some blogs and blogging in general need to re-earn it."

For many bloggers, credibility -- and decency -- should begin with an 
apology to a survivor named Jill Carroll.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/04/07/bloggers_owe_carroll_an_apology/
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