Rathergate

In all honesty, I tried putting off writing on this subject for class for as long as possible. Because no matter how many times I try and wrap my mind around this, I know what I want to say, but writing it out is a whole different story. But here it goes…

Last week when we discussed Dan Rather, one of the most respected television reporters for nearly 25 years, it really hit me how powerful bloggers can be. For those of you who don’t know the story, here is a short synopsis. 

Himself and his team put together a report about President George Bush II. In this report they showed documents that they had obtained from an anonymous source,  that claimed that Bush dodged the draft and that he obtained special treatment in the National Guard because of his family. Immediately after the report aired, viewers began to question the credibility of these documents. And who wouldn’t. They were from an anonymous source after all.  And that’s when bloggers began to.. well, blog. Blog about how the forms were false and uploading pictures on how easily the documents could have been forged. 

That ladies and gentlemen, is how powerful blogs can be. The fact that a few people, jumped onto their blogs and began ranting about how the documents were fake. It was powerful enough to get Rather in big trouble, and forced him to resign not much later. This “blogosphere” we now have, has opened up doors for bloggers to speak out more freely and be heard.

It is quite unfortunate that Rather resigned, but he made one of the biggest mistakes as a Journalist. I don’t care how real those documents looked, I would have found more proof behind it, found out if anyone could identify the documents as been authentic. He made a big mistake about trusting this anonymous source. And that’s what we learn as Journalists, don’t use anonymous sources, because you never know whether or not, what they are feeding you, is accurate.

With bloggers out there like the ones in this story, it kind of helps give out a bit of a guarantee that the media is trying their very best to be honest. Because you know as soon as something smells fishy to them, they will be on your ass so fast, your head will spin. 

As a new blogger and a young Journalist, it will be interesting to see how I manage to balance the two when it comes to writing. As a blogger, I am being trained to see the questionable in stories, and as a Journalist, I can never let my stories cross the line of truth and questionable.