So when is a blog not a blog? Or when is a blog entry not a real blog entry?
This is all about the Ariana Huffington/George Clooney flap that’s been going on this week.
Full disclosure here: I think Ariana Huffington is a bitch on wheels who would cut her own child to further her agenda. I think George Clooney is a wonderful actor and anyone related to Rosemary Clooney is automatically on my A list, anyway, but I don’t really give a whit about his politics. Actors and politics are highly overrated and in California, the marriage of the two generally begets disaster. Further, I LOATHE the need for right-wingers to drip the word “Liberal” over their commentary as if it were some kind of poison syrup.
To Denise’s question: When is a blog a blog? Well, a blog is a website with entries published in reverse chronological order. So that’s not really THE question. Next she asks, “[When is] a blog entry not a real blog entry?”
Okay here is my thing. My blog is only my blog if I write it. If you write something on my behalf, while chock full of my quotes taken out of context and admittedly said by me, its still not my blog.
I agree with that. Here’s the thing: This isn’t really about blogging, it’s about ethics. Ariana Huffington calls herself a journalist. (I disagree, but that’s moot for this discussion). By claiming to be a journalist, she is asking her readers to enter into a trust relationship with her. That relationship implies that if readers read Ariana’s blog or GUESTS to Ariana’s blog, they can reasonably rely upon the fact that what they are reading is accurately reported or written by the person whose name appears at the top of the entry.
Readers are not entitled to objectivity, and they won’t get it on Ariana’s blog. They are, however, entitled to disclosure that when an entry is posted which purports to be from another person, that person actually wrote the words. In this case, the words were lifted from two interviews, pulled out of context and posted on her blog under his name. Further, a dismissive approval by a publicist is inadequate vetting for any journalist to go forward.
She is also a publisher. Any of us who maintain blogs are publishers. In her case, as the publisher of words that are not hers, she had a duty to be true to the spirit of the quotes she published and to disclose to the readers that they were compiled from interviews. Instead she intentionally misled by saying it was Clooney’s blog. It wasn’t, obviously.
Ariana Huffington is an amoral ragmonger who will suck river slime in order to further her agenda. It is so far removed from what bloggers do, and what they are about as a majority that it’s hard to even use this as an example of transparent/masked blogging. However, it is important, particularly with the political season looming large in front of us, because the bloggers will have a voice in the next campaign and also because of the attitude in Washington DC that bloggers are not journalists and are not entitled to constitutional protection as a result.
She could have published those statements all day long as quotes with attribution and no one would’ve batted an eye, including Clooney. By publishing them as Clooney’s blog she was able to ride the coattails of an incredibly popular actor while at the same time harming his reputation by pulling his statements from their original context and amalgamating them into something new. Which of course, was exactly what she intended to do.
The undercurrent to this whole thing is this idea of ‘ghostwriting’ blogs, which is what Sneadwoman alludes to in her post. I view what Huffington did as an act of plagiarism, which is not even close to ghost-writing. Ghost-writers generally have a relationship with those they are writing for and there is give and take, approval and disapproval. Publicists’ approvals notwithstanding, none of that was present here.
I think there is a place for ghostwriting, but not in the realm of opinion-based blogging and certainly not where the original “blogger” does not have control over the final content. It’s a non-issue in this case — Ariana Huffington just proved what a publicity whore she can be when she used Clooney to generate some blog buzz heading her way. She loves every minute of it.
Ariana’s final words on the topic really show her true colors, and let the reader beware:
“But, some have asked, is a blog still a blog if it contains repurposed material? My answer is: absolutely. Who cares if the ideas were first expressed in a book, a speech, a play, or an interview? The medium isn’t the message; the message is the message. With the right medium providing the needed amplification.”
Ummmm, Ariana. It’s only a blog if the repurposed material is properly attributed to the interviews from which it was originally lifted and the ORIGINAL speaker/author/playwright approves it as to form and substance. Not the publicist. Not the secretary. The ORIGINAL writer. What you have is plagiarized content, and your lame attempts to justify it just prove what an amoral and unreliable voice YOU are.
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