A recent front page headline in the National Post about Iran wanting to compel its non-Muslim citizens to wear distinctive markers on their clothing drew a couple of nasty comments. The headline report was false. Some of the comments have prompted me to think about blogs and my blogging.

I hope that readers don't come to this blog looking for journalism. I am a blogger, not a journalist. This distinction has clear implications in my own mind. I am not a professional writer nor do I derive my income from this activity. Blogging for me is an act of will: I blog because I want to blog.

By the very nature of blogging, the distinction between the two activities is blurred. The more so since some journalists blog, and some bloggers blog like journalists. But it does not make the two the same. Journalists have editors and third parties look at their copy before publication, they have a deep pool of resources, fact-checkers and data bases.

Some resourceful bloggers, conversely, can make up for the institutional lack of resources and conduct careful research, triple edit their own copies, etc.. Typically, bloggers who have the discipline to do these things are the better bloggers. In addition, although journalists are bound by ethical and professional guidelines, most responsible bloggers can keep to similar principles. Honesty and integrity are not inherent characteristics of journalists.

In spite of the similarities, I have voiced some of my concerns about the pitfalls in recognizing bloggers as equals to journalists. My present thinking about blogging and journalism stems in part from those concerns. Mostly, however, I think that blogging is by nature an independent, informal activity.

Blogging is multiversal and there is no single way of being a political blogger -or any type of blogger. Some will report, research and even break stories in journalism-like fashion -but even when they do that, they introduce a measure of their personal touch that separates their writing from the institutionalized MSM. Bloggers often shoot from the hip. Most of us are commentators of sorts. Bloggers bring to their writing a wealth of flavour and expertise that the best newspapers cannot often summon. The rich variety of comment is what makes blogging exciting and interesting.

Frankly, I don't want to be a reporter, or even imitate what they do. On one occasion, I "reported" in this blog during last spring's floods in southern Alberta. I took some pictures, and shared them with readers. But I could not behave like a journalist. I refused to catch people's personal misery with my camera -especially since I knew that MSM media would do that in spades. I stuck to pictures of the water and its damage to things, trees, property and so on.

When I commented on the NP news about Iran, I received comments that I had "fallen for it." The implication being that those who didn't write about it knew that the report was false. Such knowledge would have required writing about the falsehood, which the mockers did not do. Call me naà ¯ve, but the headline made sense to me because the question had been debated in the Iranian parliament before. Most of the triumphalist lefty posting on the subject had more to do with ideological partisanship “rubbing right-wingers' nose in it” than it did with the nature of blogging. It contributed nothing to make blogging less vulnerable to such things.

But in all, only a few bloggers cheaply and habitually cut other blogs down all the way to misspelled words, a thing worse than relying on MSM (–but that is part of the multiversal nature of cyber space, btw: there is a market for everything). Would I have fallen any less if I had been defending Iran instead of pointing out that there is a streak of totalitarian theocracy in its rulers?

That is the part that forces me to re-think the purpose of this blog. Having rethought it, its purpose has not changed for me. It's still a blog of my own political commentaries, and/or about things that catch my eye or I am thinking about, or I happen to spot in some news media. But I have no delusions about being a journalist. My entries carry no more weight than do letters to the editor or an opinion piece in a newspaper. Without being irresponsible (e.g. attacking bloggers for its own sake), I do not have the responsibilities that journalists theoretically have. Writing op-ed pieces or letters to the editor does not make one a journalists any more than phoning the Rutherford Show would make one a radio announcer. If sometimes there is any merit in what I write, it is not to be found in any "facts" but in my take on whatever, if at all. Earnestly or cynically, coming here strictly for facts would be a grave mistake.

Journalists are neither superior nor inferior to bloggers. Like all human activities, journalism can be practiced well or practiced badly. One wrote, for example, that the government of the United States has become fully responsible for the intensity of hurricanes. Paul Wells once took me to task for commenting on a situation outside of its context, then exhibited the same lack of evidentiary rigor by suggesting that I am unemployed, anatomically-correctly sitting at home in my pajamas (so what if I do?).

Evidence is important. Most bloggers commenting on public affairs are commenting on actual affairs. In that sense, and without wishing to imply that facts don't matter, the commentary is more central than the factual stuff. There is an implied trust in some of the MSM reports that we comment on –If nothing else because suspecting everything leads to seeing black helicopters hovering over head. Many bloggers comment on the same events, but it's their unique interpretations that makes reading them desirable.

My blogging mistakes will see some more mistakes, without a doubt. But if I have some energy and time (and time is becoming more and more scarce), I'll continue to link to news I find interesting and/or acridly comment from my own perspective.

Cranky on the banks of Alberta's Sheep River, I remain a blogger, not a journalist.