We all need to be in the know. Whether we listen to the current events on the radio, read it in the newspaper, watch it on television or online, or even read posts about it on Twitter, we all have the silent agreement that we just have to be in the now and in the know. There are many arguments for why blogging and micro-blogging shouldn’t be classified as the standard for traditional news, however there’s a point to be made that no matter what platform we’re getting our information from all that matters is that we are keeping up with what’s happening locally, on a national level and/or world wide.
The bigger concern is who we’re listening to. Tony Rogers, from Thoughtco, makes a good point when he says that there’s a difference between opinions and facts. Many bloggers today are putting their two cents into something that should just be pure facts, especially when these same bloggers are implying that they are doing a news report. Something I learned with Twitter posts and popular users is that they’ll report up-to-date information, but subtly add their own opinion. Rogers states that, “being a real reporter involves finding new information, not just commenting on information that’s already out there.” According to this study, Twitter posts and the amount of users on the social media website increased rapidly (by the millions) over the span of a few weeks in 2007. This goes to show that anyone can micro-blog, and millions of people out there can give various pieces of information all that can either be reliable or unreliable- subtly opinionated or not opinionated at all.
However, does this mean we shouldn’t trust blogs at all? Not necessarily. Some blogs are owned by actual news sources such as CNN and The NYTimes, according to Benjamin Carlson of The Atlantic. Much of the information being given out is trustworthy, or at least can be trusted to a certain extent (given that CNN is notoriously known for making up their own facts sometimes, or even exaggerating stories).