As Karlin Lillington, a technology journalist of the Irish Times pointed out, "journalists face libel laws, whereas some bloggers behave as if they're in the Wild West. Bloggers will state things without saying where they got them from. And increasingly, blogs are used to promote products without making this clear". Thomas Burg, of BlogTalk.net, saw things very differently, saying "weblogs are not about content but about sharing, learning and connecting with other people". Blogs should thus be seen as free conversations between people who do not need to adhere to specific rules, rather than as news postings on the Internet. Aidan White, General Secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, vehemently disagreed, saying that a democratic society sets certain norms and standards which should not be thrown out of the window. He deplored the lack of a global legal framework to combat child pornography and libellous or hateful weblogs on the Internet. Richard Corbett, the first member of the European Parliament to start his own weblog, agreed. He was not optimistic that the accountability and reliability of weblogs could be strengthened.
For these very reasons, White was convinced that the websites of traditional news organisations, such as the BBC or CNN, would continue to be in great demand. "People have little time and want to be reasonably confident that the sites they visit are reliable, whereas a lot of weblogs are tripe", he said. The exciting thing about weblogs, however, is that they have reinvigorated the debate about journalistic methods and ethics, a debate long overdue, he said. Lillington was also sceptical about the claim that bloggers would push major media organisations out of business, adding that she was waiting for the first court case over libel in a weblog. Nevertheless, it was generally felt that weblogs could be a useful complement to traditional journalism, as they allowed journalists, or others for that matter, to write about issues which would otherwise never be published, provided that a weblog is used intelligently. Corbett explained that his weblog allowed him at least to counter some of the eurosceptic myths published by a largely eurosceptic press in Britain and to get feedback from his voters. The possibility of interacting with readers of weblogs was cautiously seen as an asset, although the same problem of possibly undesirable postings on the net arose. It was for that reason, Corbett said, that he kept control of any reactions he received.
As regards privacy, Lillington acknowledged that weblogs after last December's tsunami were a useful source of information and that pictures taken by passers-by after the bomb attacks on the London underground were posted on the Internet quicker than by any established news organisation, but she also stressed that these did somehow damage privacy. However, she added, "these are not new crimes, there are just new tools to commit them".
Guido Baumhaumer, editor-in-chief of the online section of Deutsche Welle, who led the debate, concluded by quoting Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future, that "blogging is a transitional form on its way to something else".
