Bigfoot/ Sasquatch Update August 15th, 2008
The two men claiming to have a Bigfoot come forward at a press conference today. Full Story »
Posted by Carl BenjaminReview
First of all, I want to praise this blogger because he is trying to be fair, and that is a quality we need more of online. However, this type of submission to the NewsTrust.net site puts itself at immediate risk of low rating, not because the blogger deserves such, but because this is not journalism; it is an online diary about a topic in the news. As such, we read an account of what Carl Benjamin viewed and feels about Bigfoot coverage. In his link for trackback--I wish traditional journalists would do more of this online--we get this observation rather than the news: "Yesterday afternoon, I was listening to Fox News on my radio. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. They were actually talking about Bigfoot." The more substantive update on this topic submitted for review indirectly documents why we need NewsTrust to monitor traditional news outlets more closely than blogs, even if the latter may be more popular with the online audience. The blogosphere never anticipated that it would become a platform for news; it was founded on the premise, similar to that of NewsTrust.net, that bloggers would hold the news media accountable, as it did in the Dan Rather memogate fiasco (see http://news.cnet.com/Bloggers-drive-hoax-probe-into-Bush-memos/2100-1028_3-5362393.html ). As the traditional news media downsized, and as reporters increasingly took to blogging, the line between platforms blurred. In sum, Carl Benjamin is reporting what reporters said about a staged event on a hoax topic. It is a fairly interesting Web exercise to see where he linked to in the assembly of a blog post because he misspells Palo Alto as "Palto, Alto" in the fifth paragraph. That said, his post attempts to be open-minded and does provide a round-up of stories about a topic that entertains the American public. Also, in his favor, Mr. Benjamin did note in his final paragraph the real topic the news media should be covering with this level of intensity, and that is the discovery in the Congo of 125,000 gorillas. Notes: Mr. Benjamin gets this figure wrong, citing 80,000 gorillas, misreported on a few blog sites. Also, reporters on the press conference scene put the number of journalists attending closer to 200 than 100, an indication of the state of the news media in 2008.
Although Carl Benjamin calls his posts “articles,” they are blog posts citing other sources, many of them second-hand; as such, some of what Mr. Benjamin reports is third-hand from the viewpoint of his computer. Again, however, I want to emphasize that he is a blogger being held to journalism standards according to principles NewsTrust.net has identified as critical in gauging the quality of an article.
As depicted in online pictures, the “body” of Bigfoot appeared thawed and in a storage freezer. Pictures are easily manipulated on the Web and so it is difficult to tell if the creature is real or just a person in a costume.