BLOG-BASHING

Above is Malay Mail's Saturday 29th July issue. The headline "BLOG-WASH" played on the word "hogwash" meaning:

hog·wash (hôgwôsh, -wsh, hg-) n. 1. Worthless, false, or ridiculous speech or writing; nonsense. 2. Garbage fed to hogs; swill. The sub-head (or whatever they call it in Journalism schools) reads "EXCLUSIVE SURVEY REVEALS MALAYSIAN BLOGGERS TALK BOLLOCKS!" Unlike bloggers, I guessed newspaper people cannot use "cock" which is more apt because "bollock" means: Verb 1. bollocks - make a mess of, destroy or ruin; "I botched the dinner and we had to eat out"; "the pianist screwed up the difficult passage in the second movement" bobble, bollix, bollix up, bollocks up, botch, botch up, bumble, bungle, flub, fluff, foul up, fuck up, louse up, mess up, mishandle, muck up, ball up, spoil, muff, screw up, fumble, blow go wrong, miscarry, fail - be unsuccessful; "Where do today's public schools fail?"; "The attempt to rescue the hostages failed miserably"

"Bollocks" do mean "rubbish" in certain quarters but surely not in a newspaper with an old history.

I do agree that bloggers writing are sometimes worthless, nonsensical or ridiculous. My own blog is a very good example. But you cannot accuse a blog of being false. They might get their facts wrong or mixed up sometimes but they are as real as Maya Karin's boobs. I hope the Malay Mail did not confuse blogs with fora. In a forum people might say false things. You know, things like people asking to meet another people etc which are later known to be untrue. Blogs sometimes have comments though. Some comment pages are like fora too. People say something, other people respond. The owner of the blog do not control what people say. Unlike newspapers, owners of blogs do not have GEIC or even an Editor. The most owners can do is delete comments after they have fed babies, water the plants, pacify mother-in-laws etc.

Most blogs are personal spaces. Like your personal spaces, you do what you like with them. You put up journals, raves and rants, photographs, songs, cures for constipation...whatever. Nobody should tell bloggers what to put on their blog. Blogs are not newspapers. Of course this does not mean that all applicable laws on slander etc do not apply to bloggers. No bloggers that I know ever claim that they are above the law. Bloggers are after all ordinary citizens who, when MSC was first mooted, were promised that Internet shall not be censored. I am sure newspaper guys can dig this up from their archives. But then, the trend nowadays is to retract agreements and break promises. That is not the bloggers fault.

My eldest daughter argued better on this. I inherited just a bit from her. Read her Thursday 27th July post.

By the way, if blogs are hogwash why is the NST (at one time a relative of Malay Mail) nurturing MoNSTer?