About once a week I hear a TV "journalist" speak of the ill influences of the "bloggers". Just hearing the word blogger on TV gets my attention. Most of our local TV stations all have blogs - even if they just discuss the weather. Yet a few of these "professionals" do seem to have an axe to grind when it comes to people who do not get paid to blog.This morning my curiosity got the best of me when this title showed up in my Google Reader: Catholic bloggers aim to purge dissenters. Here are a few tidbits:
A new breed of theological conservatives has taken to blogs and YouTube to say the church isn't Catholic enough. Enraged by dissent that they believe has gone unchecked for decades, and unafraid to say so in the starkest language, these activists are naming names and unsettling the church.That phrase, "Taliban Catholicism" caught my attention. I wondered what would motivate a person to use that terminology. Why would someone use such a pejorative term in describing people who do not agree with them? Then I reread it and realized that the person works for a newspaper. Small wonder that a person working for a dying medium would be threatened by bloggers. In my opinion blogging has changed the game.
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"We're no more engaged in a witch hunt than a doctor excising a cancer is engaged in a witch hunt," said Michael Voris of RealCatholicTV.com and St. Michael's Media. "We're just shining a spotlight on people who are Catholics who do not live the faith."
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John Allen, Vatican analyst for the National Catholic Reporter, has dubbed this trend "Taliban Catholicism."
And for those folks who object and say that blogging is just a source of misinformation and confusion, I counter and say that people are a lot smarter than the news folks give us credit for. Too long have the professionals looked down their noses at the people they write for. We are not unintelligent. We understand the biases you bring to your reporting.
And to clarify, bloggers are not journalists - we do not want to be. We are often opinion writers. We are folks who actually entertain feedback and dialog about what we write.
So I am wondering? Have you heard anyone on TV or radio speaking ill of "the bloggers"?
I've seen bloggers dismissed in several circles. Heck, I've done it myself. "That's your source? It's just a blog!" Of course that doesn't change the fact that information is the same whether it comes from a free blog or a huge news organization. Both can be as truthful or untruthful as they choose to be.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't compare the Catholic policing group to the Taliban unless they started using similar violent tactics. This isn't a new thing, orthodoxy has been calling out what it considers heterodoxy for millenia.