There’s another difference - other professions don’t see themselves as “watchmen”, which is all well and good, and haven’t taken it upon themselves to trash other folks who make mistakes, which isn’t.

Journalists like to point to their grand intents, but given their actual delivery, is it really surprising that no one cares what happens to them? (No - their intent doesn’t count nearly as much as the reasonably forseeable consequences of their actions. In fact, their reliance on the former as a defense when the latter comes up is merely evidence of insanity.)

For example, several months ago, I wrote a piece on women who kill their husbands and then use the “battered women” defense at Dean’s World, where I’m a contributor. Not only was the Mary Winkler story in the news, but we’d had several similar incidents in my local area.

A couple of weeks ago I got e-mail from someone who claimed to know one of the local suspects intimately, and insisted what I was saying was “lies, all lies” or something to that effect. So I e-mailed back, with a request for more specifics. Also suggested he or she (it was one of those first names that could be either one) contact the local newspaper and TV stations with any corrections to the story.

The points I’d been working with were several accounts from police who reported multiple past instances of domestic violence, where it was clear to them the female suspect was the offender. These had been reported on the TV stations and one local newspaper.

After a couple of e-mail exchanges, it came clear that my correspondent, who turned out to be the suspect’s sister, could not discredit anything in either my blog entry or news accounts; her primary interest was in keeping the issue out of the news, because she was afraid the suspect’s children would see negative things about their mother and be somehow damaged by the revelation. As if these kids, ages 9, 13, and 18 were entirely unaware of anything amiss in their mother’s behavior and would only find out by reading my stuff online.

People sometimes have a weird concept of news altogether, especially when it affects them personally.

If a major blog prints an error, it’s often corrected within minutes (or hours), and the former error remains there for everyone to see.

Of course, blogs tend to make a lot more errors. So, you’re kinda screwed whichever way you go: which brings us back to square one. “The medium is the message.”

Update: I added a strike tag, thinking it wouldn’t recognize it! Please delete the previous comment