Blogs as a source of information in traditional media
It very worrying to see traditional media use anonymous blogs as a source of information. Some time ago a local newspaper Turun Sanomat wrote about the Gaza conflict and wrote about how bloggers are reporting about the events. A couple of different blogs were meantioned, among them Life must go on in Gaza and Sderot and Tales to tell, both anonymous. I have no reason to suspect that these blogs would not be written by people actually living in the middle of the conflict, but neither I nor the newspapers can be absolutely sure. Anyone can start a blog. My neighbors teenaged boy could start a blog and claim that he is writing from Gaza or Afganistan or the moon even. We are used to trust newspapers, and we should trust them. Articles published in newspapers go through quality control and we know who are responsible for the accuracy of the news. We don’t know who is writing anonymous blogs and we can be quite sure that the entries do not go through any quality control.