A tweet-debate was even organized Friday night on that very topic, but since the first hour had four of us agreeing we didn’t like it, it wasn’t much of a debate and I left.[break]
In the last week the conversation has dwindled. I’d assumed the journalist who Facebook-ed my Nepaliketi account the details had done so to inform us of what I presumed everyone saw as an attempt to institutionalize and regulate blogging.
I’d commented last week, saying, “Thanks for sharing the link to that ridiculous piece - since when did bloggers want to be regulated? You go to mainstream media for that!”
I’m on my Nepaliketi Facebook so infrequently that only at about 4am Thursday “night” did I see the essay of an explanation offered by Ujjwal Acharya. So, now that I’m all charged up again, allow me to blog!
There are plenty of bloggers who use their blog as a mouthpiece for their journalism-ing and politicking, but there’re also a few of us who blog just to blog – as in to “web log” (which is where the term, “blog” was coined from). We blog things we think, feel, see, like, dislike, experience, blah blah blah - usually in the subjective form.
Some academics use blogs to post summaries of theories they are developing or others they are arguing. Some politically-likeminded use it as a venue to do the same.. But, blogging seems to primarily be a subjective activity, as in you write what YOU think, feel, believe, etc.
This is entirely the opposite of what journalists are paid to do – be objective.
So, for instance, if there was a bandh today, I could get on my blog and say, “It’s wonderful that another marginalized group without mainstream support gathered their guts and blocked all major roadways because desperate times calls for desperate measures and they don’t have much say in media or parliament or business so they resorted to the weapon of the weak”.
Now that’s a lot of personal opinion based on an actual event, though littered with subjective thought (yes, plenty also borrowed from James Scott and maybe Ranajit Guha!), BUT the point is it’s got emotion.
Media, on the other hand - the mainstream of them like national dailies, television crews and radio can only give us “facts” like, “Today, from 2PM to 4PM the Guffadi (www.guffadi.blogspot.com) -inspired WWWWWW, We Will Write Whatever We Want, faction of the Blogger Party – Democratic gherao-ed Singha Durbar to protest the Code of Ethics”.
Sure, the reporter can and probably will get quotes from both sides, offer some (hopefully unbiased) explanation of the organization, objective, management, etc, but insofar as providing their own opinion…well, it’s either got to be oh so very subtle or, ideally, not there at all. (How mainstream media itself is a voice of the majority, not the minority, is a whole other blog topic!)
Which is all to say when bloggers are blogging we are usually expressing personal sentiment.
We are not assuming we are credible enough to feed the masses what we think as fact - that is what we read, watch, and listen to the news for! When citizen journalism - both that feign or truly deliver objective news dissemination blogging, that’s different. Citizen journalism, by the way, is fantastic.
It’s exactly the kind of thing THE blogger Dinesh Wagle, who shethinkstoherself (www.shethinkstoherself.wordpress.com) points out, “started blogging in order to have opinions and thoughts that he had to omit from mainstream media” was doing.
I blog to web log thoughts and feelings of daily life in Kathmandu, obviously and openly subjective precisely because they are personal. Jhusilekira (gooeyjournalism.blogspot.com) writes poetry.
Bijay (bijay.wordpress.com) puts up his photography. K-sang (theelectricheartgirl.blogspot.com) maintains a fashion blog. Sumina (suminakarki.wordpress.com) writes about culture, crafts, clothing and more recently, things she saw and thought in meeting her interlocutors that don’t belong in a journalistic piece (she’s a real journalist).
Anyway, you get the point. If you are journalism-ing on blogs, there’s nothing wrong in making, signing, amending codes, bills, acts - the works!).
But, it’s also rnecessary to point out all bloggers aren’t (secret) journalists, and that our ears are automatically perk when one identity we take – as “bloggers” is motioned to be signing things somewhere with some NGO.
Also, the Facebook comment left by Ujjwal Acharya regarding the code of ethics hinted at its aim to protect “bloggers” should legal cases be filed against them based on the Electronic Transaction Act of 2008.
Ujjwal Acharya, the driving force behind the Code, informs us that defamatory writing in the electronic form may result in the writer being fined Rs 100,000 and/or spending six months in prison.
I suppose big corporations can also pay an expensive lawyer to make the most innocent appear guilty, but really if you said something outright defamatory why should you be protected?
Especially since, you know, defamation itself can also subjective? If somebody had it out for you - your poetry, fashion, photography and thoughts even could all be legally coded as defamatory.
The defendant’s defense would hang on how good a lawyer you could afford.
Because if the “political class” considered Maila Baje’s (nepalinetbook.blogspot.com) most recent post defamatory (it did after all read, “Our squabbling political class has had its hands full protecting itself from the people’s indignation,” and labeled the plaintiff as “squabbling”) how would we, a) decide whether “squabbling” was defamatory or not – I mean it’s a regular blog that doesn’t sell itself as the beacon of truth as newspapers do, b) if it really truly was defamatory why should Maila Baje be protected?, but most of all, c) how on earth could we possibly figure out if it is, indeed, Gyandendra or someone even more mysterious?
For more Nepali Keti, visit nepaliketi.net
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