Yesterday's post about threatened people and their futile insistence on the supremacy of their authority model finally leads me to Nick Cohen and his assurances that, in the face of the Evil Internet, his profession (journalism) is the last bastion of all that is objective and authoritative in the world of human information. And yet journalists are also headed towards the relegation pile, along with those displaced academics. Hmmm. For why?

Shockingly sweary - and therefore unreliable, obviously - blogger Obnoxio has a few things to say about Nick. Longrider provides further, clean commentary, albeit with a dirty laugh. Of course, you can’t trust what he says either, because he blogs too. I just can’t resist including this little gem from Nick:

“The best reason for wanting my colleagues to survive is that serious reporters and broadcasters offer a guarantee that what they say is true. If they stray, their editors impose journalistic standards and insist on objectivity... readers should be able to assume their work is reliable, while a blogger's commitment to objectivity can never be assumed."

What?! There is no guarantee that what serious reporters and broadcasters say is true, objective or reliable, and neither should there be. The world would be a very dangerous place indeed if this were the case, and there are enough sheeple already who foolishly believe what they read; regurgitating what they are told, no matter how preposterous, without question.

A cursory reading of coverage of the same incident in the Guardian or the Daily Mail, for example, shows that the presentation or omission of purported fact says as much about the newspaper as the mere accuracy of what has been reported (which is also often questionable, in any case). The targeted use of content to successfully position each publication within its social and political market is so blatant as to garner regular satire and ridicule. Talk of “commitment to objectivity” is dangerous ground.

The real difference between bloggers and journalists is that bloggers can’t easily tread on such dangerous ground. They tend to blog because of personal preference, passion or specialism – but they cannot expect that their readers will simply take what they say as “fact” and therefore have to work from this reality. The best bloggers earn authority status over time, rather than simply expecting it courtesy of a large and often undeserving organisation. This is because bloggers occupy vulnerable positions, always subject to continual, unrelenting criticism and peer review from every angle. There is no organisation to hide behind.

This oft-quoted argument that the internet corrupts information makes me cross. It’s utterly insulting to human intelligence. Methods to assess the authenticity, reliability, validity, and relevance of any information source are easier, quicker and more effective than ever when that information is accessible online.

• Google’s search algorithm is, in itself, a very basic (if automated) example.
• Wikipedia articles - open for all to edit, and generally ranked highly by Google - are another example.
• The referencing of articles on multiple sites, and the very nature of those sites, is a pretty clear indicator.
• The public bookmarking or tagging of articles, as well as the applications used, all communicate something about their relative values and audience appeal.
• The clear and traceable identity of an author; the quality of the writing; the look and feel of a website – all of these elements can be important, depending on the context.
• The ability to trace the lineage of documentation, for example in terms of transparency of referencing, editing, updating and version control, also speaks volumes.
• Whether a blogger allows comment, or the detail of his commenting policy, allows the reader to draw useful inferences.

I could go on... And when several of these methods are used in conjunction with each other, the management of readily accessible knowledge has never been more powerful. Does traditional print journalism or academia offer the same easy opportunities for scrutiny?

Anyone freely accessing information would naturally exercise the critical judgement and problem-solving skills they were born with and discover these methods over time. Unless, of course, they have been taught that so-called authoritative sources don't need to be held to account in this way – a worldview that our very 20th century state education system continues to perpetuate, for all its rhetoric about 21st century schools. It's a cop out to blame the internet for the inability of children - or anyone else - to engage in critical thinking and problem solving.

The reality is that in the quest for truth, nothing is foolproof; at best we can only hope to be reasonably certain of something, given the information at our disposal. But surely the most important thing is to trust in is one’s own inherent ability to work this out for oneself, to one’s own satisfaction? If we are to be truly independent thinkers, then delegation of that trust to a third party should only ever be at our discretion.

So, upon reflection, I am with the aforementioned gentlemen (you know, the untrustworthy bloggers) on this one – and not for the first time. It is this iterative process of analysis and regular agreement with their arguments that leaves me in the postion of giving more weight to the information they present than I would, perhaps, to that which Nick puts forth.