ABSTRACT
The evolution of Internet gatekeeping in relation to blogging and citizen journalism has yet to reach stasis. Questions still revolve around who should do the gatekeeping and under which standards it should operate. Fortunately, movement is apparent; journalists and citizen journalists are beginning to work out means for keeping order in the news-related part of the blogosphere. After general discussion here of traditional views of gatekeeping and of how some journalists are trying to approach the question, this chapter explores how group blogs try to “police” themselves in what is still an undefined and, often, unsuccessful manner. This examination ends with a discussion of why it is important in the new technological milieu to recognize that gatekeeping today needs to be understood in ways far beyond its more traditional definition. In his 1731 Apology for Printers, an early exploration of gatekeeping through necessity, Benjamin Franklin tried to divorce responsibility for the act of printing from responsibility for content. He failed: “I my self have constantly refused to print any thing that might countenance Vice, or promote Immorality; tho’ by complying in such Cases with the corrupt Taste of the Majority, I might have got much Money” (Franklin reproduction, originally published 1731). By refusing to relinquish all control over content, he maintained control over all content. Franklin argued that no middle route could be safely or effectively trod, for the placing of that route between “hands off ” and “hands on” is extraordinarily subjective. Where Franklin did succeed, however, was in clearly laying out a dilemma faced by the controllers of media production and distribution, one that continues even in the twenty-first century. At what point do community standards relieve the “printer” of responsibility for refusal to print? Or, turning it around, what are the limits of the printer’s options? Community standards are often poorly defined and if the printer defaults to such guidelines too loosely, the printer faces consequences. If, on the other hand, the printer interprets community standards too strictly, the printer still faces consequences. Ultimately,
for Franklin, questions of gatekeeping came down to skill in negotiating between community standards and the need to disseminate information. Over the next two centuries, another point was added: as journalists gained skill in sorting and prioritizing information, gatekeeping came to include decision-making based on that skill. Though questioning the value of this was not a central concern of the public journalism movement of the 1990s, it has become critical in the years since as new types of entities have appeared, and confidence in the “journalist” to fulfill this role has eroded.
