Blogs are Boggling

Blogs are an outlet for any individual to be able to express themselves through the written word for the world to see. Blogs give anyone with the access to the internet to be an author without having to persuade someone to publish them. Even though the doors of expression and authorship have been opened even further, the lines between fact and fiction are quickly being blurred. With the vast amount of blogs available, you never know what you are reading is fact or fiction.

Blogs' credibility are always being questioned. With a lack of restrictions on what is being published anything and everything can be said or shown no matter how true it is. Due to this, there is a lot of room for people being fed wrong information and believing it. "Credible" and well-known blogs have the potential to be a breeding ground for potentially harmful and repetitional crushing rumors. Even though blogs are technically being "published" and could potentially be very harmful to someone's image, they are free from any potential libelous charges. In the Doe vs. Cahill 2005 case, Judge Steel ruled stated that "blogs and chat rooms tend to be vehicles for the expression of opinions; by their very nature, they are not a source of facts or data which a reasonable person would rely" (173). This ruling could tend to lead to a lot of trouble because of the fact that some people believe almost anything they read on the internet.

Reading the chapter on blogs raised a few questions. Even though Judge Steel stated that people don't read blogs as fact, aren't there a good portion of individuals who believe everything that they read on the internet? And if so, do blogs have the potential to make some people even more ignorant? I have a feeling that at some point blogs will have to become a medium that isn't free from libel laws. While there is are multitude of online outlets that anyone can publish on, there will have to become a time were libel law laws are redefined and apply to certain online mediums such as blogs.