Artistic licence

Journalists are often forced to use some artistic licence.

A journalist of Meejit's very close acquaintance was once asked to do the little notes on films for the TV listings page of The Irish Times. Now, this chap had misspent all too much of his over-extended youth watching movies, and was happy to share his bylined three-sentence opinions on them; and if he hadn't actually seen a film, he figured he would tell readers so, but add that it "looked interesting" or "sounded dreadful", based on what he gleaned from other sources.

After some weeks, however, word came from on high that this latter strategy was unacceptable: the wee blurb should always give the impression that the previewer had seen the film, whether he had or not. The editorial command was clear: The Irish Times must be authoritative – and, in cases where it couldn't be, it must pretend to be authoritative.

The coward obeyed the directive, though trying to keep his pretence in the realm of half-truth rather than outright lie. (Time and money constraints barred a frantic video-rental approach to clear his conscience.) And, guided by this small example, he learned to sneer at boasts about journalistic integrity.

Few journalists have never bluffed a bit – the levels of instant expertise required by voracious and under-paying media outlets sometimes demand BS.

Mostly we're not experts – we just play them on TV. A few political or arts journalists genuinely know more about their subjects than virtually any of their lay readers, but more of us have hidden the blush as, say, a mathematician friend chats encyclopaedically about the films of Wim Wenders – about whom we've just dashed off a half-assed screed for publication.

As blogger John Hinderaker puts it, "The world is full of smart people." Most of them don't have the peculiar skills, inclination or ego to publish their smarts. Moreover, smart people's understanding of the mass media's bluff often doesn't extend beyond their own bailiwicks: IT people know tech journalists are awful, but assume the business journalists are on the ball; business people lament the poor quality of the financial pages, but figure they can trust the arts writers; musicians throw up their hands at critics' ignorance, but reckon the news pages give them an accurate view of public events.

The Internet has the potential to bring real experts out of hiding and to cross-reference complaints. A dozen years ago, when Meejit's friend was deceiving readers, he had little to fear from those who might catch him in an inevitable mistake: a snide handwritten letter, perhaps, or a politely "puzzled" remark from someone in the pub. Now he could find himself pilloried on a blog that collects newspaper errors.

Except he probably wouldn't. Bloggers, encouraged by the "Rathergate" scandal in the States, make much of their role as watchdogs and correctors of "MSM" (mainstream media) who are also capable of setting new agendas that spread thrillingly across the virtual world. But even the best current-affairs blogs – and Ireland has a couple of fine ones – tend to be annotated series of links to (mostly) MSM output, treating that as the primary-source material and as the agenda-setter, even where the annotation is critical, as it often isn't. (The less-than-best blogs are self-indulgent rants.)

It's a fine service if you can find a like-minded blogger who tirelessly guides you to the mainstream articles and reports that interest you and sustain your outlook. These links, and the relationships they create, do change the media in terms of consumption and indeed production. But they rarely get under the skin of the media process: they rarely call our bluff. The Internet has given us a new way to reach, and hear from, those smart people out there – but maybe they still have better things to be doing.

For example: bloggers mainly followed the mainstream media's lead on the pope-is-dead story, assuming what we were witnessing was a profound outpouring of mass devotion and grief, rather than a media-driven celebrity event, with attendant public excitement.

Old and new media alike got a shock then when the "prayer service" in the Phoenix Park, plugged for most of a week, was a poorly attended damp squib (though of course they didn't call it that); soon they'll be surprised at the public indifference to the succession stakes, a contest among a gang of never-heard-of-hims. Blogs, especially from Rome, filled in some colourful detail, but your odds on finding a sceptical take were better if you were reading The Guardian than if you were randomly surfing the web.

Being online doesn't spark intellectual independence and critical thinking any more than being on the radio. Passivity, group-think and faith in arbitrary "authority" can't be cured by a technological "magic bullet".