November 2006

Everywhere I talk as a blogger, my audience are skeptical about the credibility of the blogs. I always have to answer the question: how can blogs go ahead since it lacks what the traditional media consider as one of the most important factor – the objectivity.

What I answer to them? Before going to my answer, let’s ponder on some issues.

Is there a absolute truth? NO. Truth depends on how you see it or who see it or at what situation you see it. Truth is subjective, not objective as many claim it to be.

Suppose you see a woman on the bikini at a place. What you would think on her? Ah, beautiful. And, will your thought remain same if you come to know that the girl is a Muslim? And, what if you are a Muslim yourself? I believe you thoughts will be different after each added piece of information and even your biases changes it. So, what’s the truth about the girl for others.

Media is not run by the sufferers or say insiders. Media professionals are always outsiders. They collect the information, view the entire event from outside and include their biases while writing the news.

Then wouldn’t it the media professional who filters the information and way to present it. Now, in this step those are involved who are not even the ones who acquired the information. So, how come traditional media be fairly objective?

In blogs, the bloggers posts their opinions on any events or the way they see it. Bloggers do not claim the information be entirely true – they just present it in their own way. But isn’t that what the ‘free press theory (or liberatian)’ : let the audience decide themselves. How much space does a blog entry leave for audience to ponder upon and how much the traditional media?

There is no straight-forward answers to any of these questions. Blogs at time can be objective, but are mostly subjective. Traditional media too can be subjective. So why there needed much questioning about the blog’s credibility?

Read blogs as subjective opinion of an individual - what matters you most: the numbers (or facts) or the human emotions? For me, I am as a human more interested in human emotions than the plain numbers.

After a weeklong tour to Seoul, South Korea, I am happily back to Nepal. And, now I find time to share the experience of talking about blogging as a panelist in one of the many sessions during the Asia 21 Young Leaders Summit at the Shilla Hotel.

Along with me, Enda Nasution of Indonesia, Dr. Awab Ali of Pakistan, Scarlett Li of China and Lam Oi-Wan of Hong Kong were the panelists of the session – Citizen’s Media Revolution moderated by an Asia 21 Fellow Joshua Ramo.

As I was first to go, I talked about how I started blogging and how is the Nepali blogosphere right now before going into what a blogging and citizen’s media is all about. Ali told about his experience with the Donate the Dollar and the government blocking of blogspot.com while Oi-Wan went with the her experience in Hong Kong.

Li was critical about Chinese blogosphere much to dismay to me and Ali and said Chinese blogging holds very little value in China.

Ali was much optimistic about blogging and said that the quickness of the blogging would one day replace the newspapers. I disagreed with him and said that it may change the role of newspaper but not going to replace it. We had a brief talk about it after the session too, and I think he agreed with my idea (well, probably I was trying to be optimistic about my professional career as a journalist).

The final question was about the creditability of blogs and I answered that saying that readers have to understand that blogs are written by an individual subject of personal biases.

I always believed that objectivity is itself subjective (I will tell you why sometime soon in another post) and that there is nothing called absolute truth.

Meanwhile, here are the entries I wrote for the official Asia 21 Young Leaders Summit blog – First Impression in Last Impression (Day I), A Fish in A Bowl (Day II) and Yeah! Yeah!! Yeah!!! (Day III).