blogs and the editorial guidelines

(note: I’ve just posted the following entry on the BBC College of Journalism blog. The opinions expressed in this post are my own and are NOT official BBC policy. I’m reposting here, outside the BBC firewall, so that you can join in and help inform the debate.)

I spend a lot of my time encouraging BBC journalists and editors to start looking to blogs as a possible source of contacts, context, content and comment about the topics and stories they cover.

I’m not suggesting we throw the BBC’s long established editorial values for accuracy, fairness or impartiality out the window. Quite the contrary – I think that by looking to the blogosphere, and bringing the voices we find there to our audiences when and where it’s appropriate to do so, we’re leaving fewer stones unturned in our quest to achieve those values. Besides, would it be competent journalism to disregard millions of people simply because they have posted their words and thoughts online?

Just as there are different types of radio or television programme, so to are their different forms of blog. A journalist starting their research of a topic for a factual programme, for example, might do well to look to some of the expert blogs whose authors simply find and aggregate links to news reports, research papers and other content about a particular topic.

For example, the H5N1 blog is a fantastic resource that’s been created by person with no discernable medical or scientific background, only a passionate interest in keeping abreast of the risk of a bird flu epidemic breaking out. Can journalists trust him? Are we able to verify the author is indeed who he says he is? Of course these things ARE essential if you want to quote the blogger as a source or get them on air within your programme or article. But if all you’re using the expert blog for is as a conduit to other information sources, some of which may be credible, some of it not, then I think the answer is no – it really doesn’t matter if the person who posted the link on their blog is an OAP sitting in their garden shed or a teenager in Peoria.

Another way that blogs can be useful is as a source of comment on a story of the day. Dan Gillmor, journalist and author of the highly regarded and widely quoted book We the Media, recently noted the similarity of gathering comment from blogs to a journalist doing vox pops:

“How many professional reporters ask for identification when they do the “person on the street” interviews? Few, if any, I’d guess.”

We don’t ask a shopper to produce a passport or other form of ID when we put a microphone before them and ask for their comment on the topic or issue of the day. But, just as we might want to achieve balance by following up three vox pops in front of Primark with three more in front of Selfridges, we need to understand how the blogs we select as sources of comment may or may not be representative of wider society.

Although there are many isolated examples of BBC programmes using blogs in their coverage, the best example of this I can think of is probably 5 Live’s Pods and Blogs, part of the Up All Night segment, which uses the words of bloggers and podcasters to discuss the news of the day.

Engaging with bloggers and their content for the purposes above, that is to help us find verifiable information and as sources of comment, should, I think, be part of the standard BBC journalist’s toolkit.

This, I should point out, is very different to finding an unsubstantiated story on a blog and running with it without independent verification or corroboration – which, regardless of whether the source is a blog or a dog, would be unacceptable under the BBC Producer’s Guidelines. Other broadcasters haven’t always been so careful.

Soon after the recent Virginia Tech massacre, Geraldo Rivera at Fox News showed their audience images of what they thought was the web page of the shooter:

It later became clear that the man shown live on Fox, Wayne Chiang, an Asian American man who recently graduated from Virginia Tech, once lived in the student hall of residence where the first shootings took place, and who had posted photos of himself smiling whilst surrounded by his large gun collection, was entirely innocent.

The important lesson in all of this? Increasingly, our geographical areas and social networks are being mapped onto the internet, making it a valuable way of tapping into those very communities. In fact, I believe it’s irresponsible for journalists to simply ignore (as they sometimes do, using the argument that blogs and social network’s are somehow less real because their existence is, at least initially, primarily observable online rather than in the physical world) the realms of blogging and social networking.

The BBC’s editorial values, and the techniques we use as professionals to ensure we always meet them, should remain the same regardless of whether we’re conducting vox pops outside a shopping centre, gathering the views of politicians, or reading and engaging with bloggers. Sometimes it makes very little difference if we can trust that they really are who they say they are, other times it makes every difference.