Revenge of the Blog is proud to feature Mickey Kaus, the blogger at Kausfiles.
From Kaus's Kausfiles blog: "Mickey Kaus is the
author of The End of Equality (first published in 1992 by Basic Books). He has written
about public policy for Newsweek, The New Republic, and The Washington
Monthly, among other places.
"The End of Equality discusses the larger issue of how to pursue the traditional
American ideal of social equality when incomes are growing inexorably more unequal. The book
was co-winner of the 1992 Washington Monthly Political Book Award."
Let the games begin.
See images from the speech here.
The Speech
The nice thing about blogs is you don't need to think about whether your topic is developed: you can just throw ideas out and solicit opinions to develop ideas further. There's no worries about limited space, no formatting requirements, no need for "lead paragraphs" and other journalistic practices, and so on. A whole lot of things that used to be thought essential for the practice of journalism turned out to be artifacts of print technology, and those things drop away with new technology, like blogging. For instance, the LA Times used to have the standard: "Do it once, do it right, do it long." This is no good for breaking news (which is why the LA Times didn't effectively cover any scandals while during the time this standard was used).
There are six questions Kaus wants to cover:
- Will blogs displace conventional media?
- Will blogs make money?
- Why are bloggers so right-wing?
- Will blogging require changing First Amendment doctrine?
- Will blogging lead to more tribal cocooning, where people only go to sites they believe and that encourage their world views?
- Is blogging better than what came before?
1. Will blogs displace conventional media?
No. *laughter* There's this tendency of "blogger triumphalism." But bloggers aren't as powerful as we think we are. And there are too many for each one to have effective access and range.
2. Will blogs make money?
Kaus says he gets paid money because he's part of Slate, which is part of Microsoft, which has a business plan and a whole lot of money, and can afford to spend some on Slate. Not every blogger is so fortunate.
But it doesn't matter if bloggers get paid money.
3. Why are bloggers so right-wing?
First, reaction against left-leaning media bias. Second, perhaps something about the technology that makes people more libertarian and "rational." Third, right-wing people may just be angrier: about media bias, about the world. It's hard to believe that they'll be so angry for much longer, now that the goverment is dominated by conservatives. (As an aside: Kaus uses the 2000 recount fiasco as an example of how right-wingers are so much more angry than liberals.)
But now Kaus thinks that perhaps anger is going to start building up on the left too, as the government turns away from them.
Kaus favors the media bias: Why should left-wingers become bloggers when they have the New York Times? So right-wing blogs are a reaction to the liberal big media.
4. Will blogging require changing First Amendment doctrine?
There are lots of hidden assumptions under First Amendment law: big assumptions that the speech is printed, that it's out there, that it's hard to correct. These assumptions are built into the balancing tests that are part of First Amendment doctrine, and when these assumptions change the tests will change.
Four important phenomena:
First, there's now a different definition of the press. The old views were the corporate view (press is at the top with the elites, and they have free speech rights) and the universal view (everybody has free speech rights). The corporate view was always wrong; but now it's also wrong and untenable, now that everybody has a computer and access to the Internet, and everybody can claim to be a reporter. (Making the Congressional Press Gallery pretty crowded.) If blogging is not professional, in the same way as the old media, do you really want to apply the same libel laws (for instance) to the more casual blogs? Kaus points out that a lot of speech--like casual conversation--is already mostly free from libel laws. The question is whether blogs are closer to casual conversation, or to professional media.
Second, the technology of corrections has changed. It used to be said a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on. But that's no longer true: corrections no longer require finding every physical copy and wiping out the error; now we can immediately fix errors for the whole world to say. (But Kaus is carefully agnostic about the Matt Druge libel suit.)
Third, there's a different "ecology" of how the truth comes out. You no longer just print something and send it off, then stop for a week. Instead, the process is much more of a dialogue that asymptotically approaches the truth. And the truth comes back from reader feedback via email. Kaus reports how skeptical he was of Democratic complaints during the 2000 recount--until he received personal emails from actual voters in Florida about their problems with voting. On the other hand, bloggers don't care about one kind of feedback that the conventional media care deeply about: checking with sources. Whereas conventional media often require reporters to check with sources about specific facts, most bloggers just put things out there and wait for feedback.
Fourth, things are a whole lot faster in the world of blogs.
(An aside on Microsoft, and whether corporations can do blogs: Suddenly, the corporation is also on the hooks for everything Kaus writes. And Kaus doesn't think they would have left him keep writing if they actually seriously thought hard about this. But part of the reason there's trust is that Kaus has a very good relationship with Microsoft. If the company were more suspicious, and there had to be lawyers and editors overlooking blog entries, Kaus doesn't think a blog would be possible: it'd simply be too slow.)
5. Will blogging lead to more tribal cocooning, where people only go to sites they believe and that encourage their world views?
Kaus does think that blogs are in part the antidote to cocooning, as opposed to a contributing factor. But he thinks the web--along with talk radio--helps exacerbate the cocooning problem, without promoting dialogue.
But blogs are different: To fisk somebody, you have to know about them. To attack somebody's points, you have to know their arguments. And it's also a Darwinian thing: its not in any blogger's interest to anger any other blogger, since blogs send readers to each other all the time. So there's a bit of self-interest in being nice to one another, and maintaining a civil dialogue (and linking, presumably). And the very phenomenon of bloggers arguing against one another--in this self-interest-motivated civil dialogue--keeps cocooning to a minimum.
6. Is blogging better than what came before?
The virtue of blogging: anonymous people in large organizations can tell you what's going on. You can imagine this sort of thing happening to spread information about faulty products, or bad business practices.
The truth comes out faster with blogging. Blogging connects the dots: you throw ideas out, people throw ideas back, and out of this brainstorming good and complex ideas come out from the collective insights of lots of people.
Questions & Answers
1. (Jack Balkin) The Supreme Court has consistently rejected different standards for the media and for private individuals. But in practice there's a distinction--but it's not in the black letter law. The practical distinction: First, if you're a commercial journalist, insurance companies sense that and give you different rates. Second, the procedural summary-judgment rules assist professional journalists; but if you're an ordinary person without the New York Times's counsel, you don't know about this. Balkin's opinion: What blogging does is make a phenomenon so broad that insurance companies might figure out that blogging is serious journalism. Also, the ISPs that carry bloggers can no longer be sued for carrying content: but that removes the big money-holders from the lawsuits, deterring those lawsuits. Another point: somebody might argue that bloggers should be held to a stricter libel standard. First, because public/private figure distinction becomes less clear (Glenn Reynolds is a good example). Second, because there's no requirement to correct, or guarantee of retraction. Hence there's an argument for rules requiring retraction. And they should be required because blogging is so easy, and fast, and widely read now.
*Kaus takes a deep breath.* Kaus agrees there's no distinction between professional press and private persons. But different standards apply to different types of media: and the reason those differences exist is that the people who are mostly going to be sued are professional journalists acting under certain standards. Kaus's point about corrections: the blogosphere as a whole corrects itself in a way that the old media could not. And those corrections occur among blogs a lot faster--with instant correction in other blogs--than on more static media.
2. (Balkin continues)"The last argument depends on the cocooning argument--if there is cocooning, then untruths will not be corrected quickly because readers won't go to those antagonistic/correcting sites.
Kaus thinks that blog readers are grazers, who tend to read a lot of different blogs.
3. (Glenn Reynolds) There's an assumption behind this cocooning argument: people just won't care to go further once they read one negative report. Another point: Google has changed things. Lots of information is readily available on Google. And with libel, if you think people are trying to *formulate* opinions, the sheer availability of (true) information will mitigate the effects of an alleged libel.
It's simply less damaging to say something libelous when a quick search on Google (or on the web in general) will quickly turn up the repudiation of that story.
4. A counter-gloss: Alternative ideas have a harder time getting out, if the voice of the community at large can shut down (or discount in people's minds) a small idea that everybody disagrees with.
5. Another problem with blogs: a paucity of facts, and a surfeit of opinions.
6. What about private censorship--for instance, do powerful bloggers who control lots of readers also control what other bloggers say, when those other bloggers want to keep these directed readers?
Kaus thinks: in the past, working for a large organization, you had a large group of people you couldn't offend before you could speak. But now, it's not a huge group of people: sometimes it's just a few bloggers. (But isn't this troubling?) There's always some conflict of interest. It's troubling that there are these conflicts. But reducing the problem is still better.