Although the new technology of citizen journalism through journalism brings new perspectives and opinions, there is no true way to know what information perceived is valid or not. Validity plays a major role in blogging today in term’s of the authenticity of one’s work. Citizen journalism can contain a mass amount of biased opinion and questionably valid information. With technology and the widespread of bloggers today, non-professionals have the access of identifying whether legitimate looking posts and their author are indeed reliable. Let’s take into account the Rathergate Scandal.

Dan Rather. A trustworthy anchor for CBS’ program titled 60 Minutes. Claiming to have authentic and unique material in terms of the upcoming presidential election, Rather reported four separate documents of how Bush refused to partake in a physical test in means to avoid obligatory tasks enrolled in the National Guard originally written by his commander Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. These documents were broadcasted and reported on air by Rather less than two months before the presidential election of 2004.

Once reported, online writers in the blogosphere began to notice subtle details in the documents. Such as the font size and spacing. The documents were claimed to be written in the 70’s, yet when bloggers began to investigate by transferring the documents onto Microsoft Word, they began noticing that the spacing and fonts could not have been done on a typewriter of the time. On September 15, 2004, CBS’ president Andrew Hayward made the claim that, “We established to our satisfaction that the memos were accurate or we would not have put them on television.” CBS continued to support the fact that the documents they reported on were legitimate.

Yet with so much controversy and questioning, CBS investigated and could no longer uphold their defense of the legitimacy of the documents and launched a full blown analysis of errors within the document. After a thorough investigation had been completed in January of 2005, CBS announced the resignation of many staff members including the step down for Rather from the position of anchor.

Bloggers, or so called fact-checkers, are making more and more of an impact in the online community of today. Finding what information is valid and reliable that is out online for the world to view and process. Our world is so media literate and citizen journalism is giving everyone a chance to be involved in local and global issues.

– Lissy