Forbes takes a shot over the bow at Bloggers

Forbes Magazine this week has come down hard against bloggers and their influence. There is rumbling in congress to try to “Control” the internet, Read that Bloggers. The Article is here, Attack of the Bloggers as printed in Forbes Magazine. Here is a part of that article.

No wonder companies now live in fear of blogs. "A blogger can go out and make any statement about anybody, and you can't control it.



But if blogging is journalism, then some of its practitioners seem to have learned the trade from Jayson Blair. Many repeat things without bothering to check on whether they are true, a penchant political operatives have been quick to exploit. "Campaigns understand that there are some stories that regular reporters won't print. So they'll give those stories to the blogs," says Christian Grantham, a Democratic consultant in Washington who also blogs. He cites the phony John Kerry/secret girlfriend story spread by bloggers in the 2004 primaries. The story was bogus, but no blogger got fired for printing the lie. "It's not like journalism, where your reputation is ruined if you get something wrong. In the blogosphere people just move on. It's scurrilous," Grantham says.


And though they have First Amendment protection and posture as patriotic muckrakers in the solemn pursuit of truth, the blog mob isn't democratic at all. They are inclined to crush dissent with the "delete" key. When consultant Nick Wreden criticized credit card banking giant MBNA on his blog, a reader responded in support of MBNA. Wreden zapped the comment. "I just thought: ‘This has to be a plant,'" he says.


"Blogging is still in its infancy. Imposing regulations would create a chilling effect," says Annalee Newitz, until recently a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that defends anonymous attackers. The anonymous assault has a long tradition in American political discourse, recognized by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission in 1995 and in a recent decision by the Delaware Supreme Court refusing to force an Internet service provider to disclose who called a small-town politician inept.


This has put more fear in the hearts and minds of those who like to be in control of things than all the pornography on the Internet ever did.

If you care about the first amendment this is an important dialogue. I have subscribed to Forbes for years, I endorse most of Steve Forbes says.

But he has gone off the end of the plank.

The blogosphere is astonished. Here is an article from one such.
Excerpts from that blog.

Overall, what a pile of trash from Forbes Magazine, which uses its cover to go on the attack against bloggers in the new issue. You have to register to read the stories. Go ahead if you must; it's worth reading to see how a normally solid business magazine can go astray with an alarmist and at times absurd broadside.

Do bloggers sometimes go too far? Of course. But if the best-read bloggers typically did work of the lousy quality shown in the Forbes stories, they'd be pilloried -- appropriately so.


There are columnists from newspapers who are supporting first amendment rights of bloggers to blog. Here is one of those.

In its November 14th issue, Forbes magazine published a cover story titled "Attack of the Blogs!" The deck read, "They destroy brands and wreck lives. Is there any way to fight back?"

The article, which is by Daniel Lyons, is deceptive, specious, and just plain bad journalism. With this article, Mr. Lyons and Forbes do us, as readers, a disservice, and we should mistake neither Lyons' fuming gasconade nor Forbes' absentee editorial oversight for proper journalism.



So, those of the ACLU, You free speech advocates, those of you who are journalists, where do you stand on this? Is the fact that the bulk of the Blogosphre is tilted to the right blinding you to the truth of what this really is?

The blogosphere is nothing more than a soapbox on which I stand in Hyde Park. No one has to listen (Read). No one has to agree or ever come back again. People can disagree or get their own soapbox. We just are speaking to a larger audience than I could have ever reached in Hyde Park. It’s true freedom of speech.

It’s just that it’s become so much more effective at crushing the lies that are out there by so many.

I think that’s a good thing.