The truth in blogs and between the lines

In the TODAY paper, today Wed 7th Jan, these 2 pieces of news were placed one after the other:

http://www.todayonline.com/articles/295973.asp
Locked out of war zone – Israel draws flak for ban on foreign reporters, correspondents

http://www.todayonline.com/articles/295971.asp
Pray for me, pleads blogger – Civilians have taken it upon themselves to record ongoing battle for Netizens worldwide

In light of the recent debate on the reliability and effectiveness of bloggers as news journalists (http://theonlinecitizen.com/2009/01/disgrace-the-life-and-times-of-chua-lee-hoong/) , I do believe that The TODAY Paper is trying to make a point, simply by placing these 2 articles next to each other :

The implicit message here is that bloggers as news journalists are incredibly important, and at times, can be the sole sources of the truth. Yes, one blog alone may be a questionable source of the truth, but when you hav 100 blogs giving independant and corroborative accounts, I think the reliability of this collective testimony is stronger than anything a good news paper can ever come up with.

Bear in mind that even the best of journalists are still human, and hence subject to human bias, and their accounts are still from a single person’s point of view. Bear in mind also, that no print media can ever publish 100 independant testimonies, like the internet can. Bear in mind, that the print media is subject to control and censorship, in ways that the internet can get away with.

While the underlying message from The TODAY Paper is stems solely from my (perhaps over active, imaginative) interpretation, I do think that there are times, the print media is restricted from outright making an overt statement on certain issues. I think that sometimes, we have to look at the way news articles are placed and juxtaposed, and read between these lines. This is not the first instance this tactic is employed. I believe that the paper might have been doing the same, when I wrote this blog post : http://mathialee.wordpress.com/2008/11/15/how-is-life-valued-in-court/I myself have tried a hand at this tactic in my recent post : http://mathialee.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/justice_law_courts/
Sometimes this is necessary, when one is not allowed to say certain things outright.

Because the common man has become the reporter of his own truth, and because the common man is not as sophisticated at language use as professional journalists are, we have to start looking out for the truths amongst ugly complaints, comments, and even offensive statements. We need to find out the truth and facts that have made the comon man so angry.

To reinterate my previous point once again from http://mathialee.wordpress.com/2009/01/03/freedom-of-expression-offense-and-anger/
:
PN Balji was of the view that the online news blogs today could not challenge that of the mainstream news providers, and was not likely to do so in the near future. The way I see it, if we are going to measure the success of the online media according to the same standards and criteria used to measure mainstream news providers, perhaps he would be right.

But that’s not the strength of the internet. The internet decentralizes power, takes it out of the hands of the elite few, and distributes this power into the hands of each of the millions. With the internet, talented journalists that Balji calls for, may no longer be needed. When something happens to you, you no longer need to wait for a talented journalist to tell the world your story – you can do it yourself. And if everyone involved in your situation does so, we would have the same story told from a hundred different angles, and the reader will be the determiner of the truth. No longer do we have to hear only one or two reporters’ version of the story, with all the bias – with the internet, the ideals of many many independent news providers are achieved , because everyone can now be a news provider.