Truth and Lies in Blogging

Two powerhouse (by which I mean always interesting and always eloquent) bloggers, Veronica Mitchell of Toddled Dredge and Bub and Pie, recently addressed the role and relativity of truth in blogging. Read on for both posts, and weigh in, let us know what truth means to you...how you read truth in other blogs, and the level of believability, the extension of trust (or gullibility) as you perceive it.

Veronica Mitchell of Toddled Dredge wrote Truth and Blogging:

Penelope Trunk claims that it doesn’t matter if journalists misquote everyone.

The reason that everyone thinks journalists misquote them is that the person who is writing is the one who gets to tell the story. No two people tell the same story… Journalists who think they are telling “the truth” don’t understand the truth. We each have our own truth.

Now this is not a new idea, but I have not seen it asserted so baldly with regard to journalism. If it were true, it would dramatically change the nature (or at least the ideals) of reporting.

I suspect, though, that it is less a carefully reasoned viewpoint than a hastily constructed defense of Trunk’s own character flaws. She need not take care to be honest in how she represents other people, because she cannot be dishonest - everything she says is her own “truth.”

I thought about this recently when I read one of Leslie Bennetts’ posts at The Huffington Post. Bennetts wrote a book published this year called The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much? You can read a review of her book at the New Yorker. I am not primarily concerned with her book here, but in her post about her book’s reception.

Bennetts, who thinks no women should stay home with their children, claimed that stay-at-home mommybloggers panned her book without reading it. She does not link to any such bloggers, but she provides several unattributed quotes as evidence that SAHMs were refusing to read her book without giving it a chance.

Google is a wonderful thing. A couple of searches on the quotes she provided were enough to find the cruel mommyblogger who was panning her book without reading it.

Only it turns out she wasn’t. The quotes come from KJ’s blog Raising Devils, where she writes about receiving an email about the book’s (then) future release, and how, despite her suspicions that some of it would be frustrating to her, she planned to read it anyway.

You can compare the Raising Devils post to Leslie Bennetts’ use of it. What do you think? Did Bennetts honestly represent what KJ was saying?

When Antique Mommy and I met for our baby-interrupted lunch, we talked about some of you. In between cries, we talked about bloggers we read and why, and bloggers we don’t read and why not.

Although AM and I are Christians (or maybe because of it), we each have a favorite atheist blogger. We both agreed that the ability to read the personal thoughts and experiences of someone with such different beliefs from our own feels like a great privilege. Blogging gives us a chance to know people on a level that we might not be allowed in person. The walls don’t go up so quickly. Small talk does not first weed out to whom we will reveal our true selves. The strange, instant intimacy of blogging gives us the opportunity to understand how other people see themselves and the world in a way that casual conversation does not.

But this only works if bloggers are honest about themselves (or as honest as sensible privacy concerns allow), and the community blogging has the potential to create only happens if we are honest about each other. We have not really understood someone until we can describe their thoughts or beliefs or actions in a way they recognize as themselves.

I usually shy away from this here. I try not to tell other people’s stories. But when I sum up someone else’s blog - or any other part of the person - I try to do it fairly, not least because I hope they will do the same for me.


Bub and Pie picked up the baton and ran with it in her Lies, Damned Lies, and Blog Posts:

What is the nature of truth in blogging?

(Veronica Mitchell threw down the gauntlet in her recent post on Truth and Blogging: Here’s my response, which outran comment length by a mile.)

For starters, truth in blogging has very little to do with factual accuracy. If I publish a post a few days after I write it, I may or may not bother to search out all uses of the word “today” and replace them with “two days ago.” Reported conversations are rarely complete, and the omissions may or may not be signaled with ellipses. Anecdotes are replete with alterations made for the sake of brevity: two separate events may be telescoped into one; three or more bit players may be merged into a single person. Personally, I avoid these kinds of inaccuracies whenever I can (I’m a bit nitpicky that way), but when I have to choose between deceiving my readers and boring them, I’ll usually opt for the former.

Bloggers also take on no obligation to be impartial. My representation of Dr. WRE last week was anything but impartial (and I rather depended upon Mr. B&P to show up and point that out). Perhaps an impartial way of characterizing the psychiatrist’s behaviour would be to say, “He wasn’t trying to humiliate me, but he couldn’t have done a better job if he had tried.” (Or maybe not – I’m still not quite impartial about that yet.) The anger in that post was real – the post was truthful in that respect – but as a representation of someone else, it was anything but objective.

The central subject of a personal blog is, by definition, the blogger herself. My theories and anecdotes are not scrupulously fact-checked; when I express an opinion I do not assume that I have an obligation to give equal weight to all sides. I am by nature an exaggerator; to curb that tendency here would, perhaps, elevate the truthfulness of my blog in general, but it would make it a less faithful representation of me.

The person I write about in this blog - Ms. B&P, Professor Bubandpie - is a construct. She leapt into being when I clicked "Create Blog" one spring day last year, and she has grown through a kind of awkward adolescence into what strikes me occasionally as a brash and over-confident adulthood. She is not me. And yet, my satisfaction in blogging arises almost entirely from my sense that she is me, a truer, realer me than the one who is so fettered by the conventions of real life. When I see my blog mentioned in a post, the little shock of recognition that goes over me is closely akin to the reflex that whips my head around when I hear my name called out on the street.

Truthfulness in blogging does not require objectivity, fact-checking, or even a willingness to lay bare the dark secrets of the soul. It is, I think, more social than that: it has to do with the claims we make on our readers. Even the most innocuous sort of fact-bending – the use of “today” for events that occurred yesterday – can be false if it elicits an outpouring of support for a crisis that no longer exists. Outright fabrications violate the spirit of blogging – but never more so than when they are employed to manipulate readers’ emotions, to elicit sympathy to which one is not entitled.

Our culture places enormous pressure on mothers to represent ourselves falsely – to smile stiffly when round-the-clock nursing has filled us with sleep-deprivation and rage, to mouth platitudes like “It’s all worth it” rather than speaking honestly about our fears, our obsessiveness, our chronic indecision and self-doubt. The blogosphere is not so much a place where we are required to speak these truths as an open invitation to do so. This kind of truth-telling isn’t an obligation – it’s an opportunity and sometimes even an addiction.

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What do you think?

Blog Art

Blog Art is by Julie Green of Learning & Laughter.

I teach writing, among other things. From day one of each course I teach, I emphasize that good writing requires, more than anything else, knowing your audience and being as specific and clear as possible. This last bit means using illustrative examples and polished prose. The first bit requires experience, insight, and intuition. If you lack any or all of those and still want to get a good grade, it requires meeting with your professor and asking, “What audience should I be writing for? What kind of language is appropriate? What counts as credible evidence?” Students who lack the intuition and who refuse to approach their professors often end up with mediocre grades that could have, should have, been better ones. These students assume that writing is this baffling room to which they have been barred access. They consider themselves blacklisted.

Blogging, though, is so wonderfully, oddly, even frustratingly different. Because you don’t know your audience. Or, sometimes you know specific people in your audience (I know that my mom, my sister-in-law, my friend from yoga read what I write here) but not others.

When blogging, you’re writing your own audience. Creating it with each word you type, each image you project, each story you carefully (or not so carefully) craft. It’s such a postmodern-seeming concept it’s almost hard to wrap your head around:

Your audience doesn’t exist until you create it. The audience you get is the one you make.

It’s an extremely liberating idea, at first glance. I am allowed to write as if no one’s reading, to adapt a modern-day cliché. I can share things I wouldn’t ever usually share, and hide things I can’t usually hide.

But at the same time, I think very few of us write just for the sake of writing. As a friend of mine who feared that reading my blog was like reading my diary recently wrote, “if you didn't want anyone to read it you wouldn't publish it online.” She is so right. So that leads to the question: if I want an audience, how do I get it?

Sure, in a sense I write my audience, making conscious and unconscious decisions along the way: will I use profanity in my posts? talk about my sex life? my husband? when and how will I use humor? what styles of writing will I use in my posts? will I participate in contests, carnivals, etc.? will my posts usually be long or short? will I use photographs? personal ones? will I link to other blogs and websites, situating myself within a loosely defined community?

But in another real and equally strange sense, I must go find my audience. I have to find the right people – the people who will admire the choices I’ve made along the way, who will like my mix of humor and reflectiveness, who will care what I write – and I have to get them to my blog. Again and again.

My audience doesn’t exist until I create it, and in this case that means not just writing it but going out and finding it. Is this easier or harder than writing through more traditional channels? Is it easier to write a query letter to a major magazine, a local newspaper, or a well-established online zine than to work the web looking for an audience for your work? Maybe yes, maybe no.

But there definitely is something satisfying about going out and getting it yourself. Something very empowering about writing first, addressing audience second. I’m trying to think whether there are parallels and I think there are: painting, poetry, other forms of art whose purpose is expression before economics. I doubt many folks would put bloggers in the same category as they would Picasso, but in a very real way I think that blogging is – or can be – a very high form of personal expression.

Of art.

About Julie Green...
I am currently a Ph.D. student in English at The Ohio State University, where I study twentieth-century American literature and teach writing, literature, and film courses to undergraduates. I completed a B.S. in Communication at Cornell University and an M.A. in English at Ohio State. I was born and raised in Fairport, New York and moved to Columbus in 2003 with my now-husband, a lawyer at the Ohio Secretary of State's office. We were married in June 2005 and celebrated the birth of our first child on our second wedding anniversary.

Belonging

What part of yourself do you have invested in the online community? A good number of the posts and comments here at BlogRhet over the last few months have either addressed or resonated with this question. There have been posts and comments about race and culture and how the differences among us in this respect colour our perception of the blogging world. There have been comments about inclusion and exclusion, ranging from the sense of alienation many of us take away from high school, through the discussions of tagging and sub groups inside the mommy bloggers' orbit and often touching on commenting and response to blog posts. What all the discussion seems to have in common is good will, the determination to make the community work and the willingness to speak openly and expose deep emotions in the cause of making this happen.

'I was always on the outside in high school' is a very common comment. 'I wasn't one of the popular kids'. 'I felt alienated'. 'I'm shy and inhibited face to face'. 'I don't feel confident about meeting people' -- a statement a lot of us made, while discussing the BlogHer conference and at other times. A recurring theme among those of us who answered the BlogRhet meme was that the online contacts were somehow more engaging and fulfilling than 'IRL' day to day interactions. (I think IRL is short for In Real Life - one of the things I have had to learn fast is the acronyms, short forms and references that are in common use in this on line world. What's a 'MILF', anyone?) Those of us not part of the 'white' dominant culture express concern about feeling that an important part of ourselves is not valued or ignored.

There are two areas where my experience closely matches that of the comments and posts I've been citing. One is in feeling that the online lives I touch and the discussions I have here are more fulfilling than most of my daily contacts. The other is that I am a minority; because I'm a senior I'm sometimes treated differently or with indifference by people who deal with me face to face. While agism is not on the same page as racism, getting put down or ignored because of white hair and wrinkles sure gives me empathy.

What I have invested in my blog and here is my love of writing and a commitment to write, to stretch myself, to participate in as many of the threads and tags and challenges as I can. The bloggers that I feel the most kinship with are the others of you that are doing that. The quality of a lot of what I read, and the quality of the women and men who are writing is thrilling. The encouragement, the positive responses and the wonderful way in which ideas and techniques are shuttled from person to person through the mommyblogging community is enriching, I believe, to all of us.

Some of you have invested your hearts and souls, your most cherished ideas, your emotional responses, your deepest selves in your blogs, reaching out to others in so many ways. You discuss race, religion, your personal fears and triumphs, your intimate lives. You not only write, you read, and the comments you leave when someone needs a response or comfort or advice are generous, perceptive and often hilarious. The courage of some of you, who meet very difficult days with laughter and share the experience, is immense.

When we write with this intensity, however, it is not hard to be nervous, even fearful, about the response we will get. I know that I sometimes have an inner insecure self who worries about how what I write will be received, who is disappointed when there are no comments, who feels down if something doesn't get noticed. I find it necessary to stomp on this tendency as soon and as often as possible. Because the mommy blogosphere is full of generous people who read, comment and respond and who feel guilty when they can't do so. I can't get to all the posts I want to read as soon as I would like and most of the people I know about are much busier than I am. It continues to amaze me that there is so much comment and exchange when I know how short of time and energy many people are.

Getting comments fosters a sense of belonging. So does the receipt of one of the various awards that bounce through the blogs -- things like the Just Post, the Perfect Post, The Thinking Blogger, the ROFL. Getting 'tagged' to do a meme is also a boost to the camaraderie quotient. I think these are all good things. But they come with a price. To get one of the post awards, it is necessary to write that kind of post. It is also gracious to look for posts that fit the criteria and nominate them. Established bloggers go out of their way to select newbies for awards and tags, which is one of the things I like a lot about them, but they can't include everybody. It is not productive to be hurt if you aren't selected for something: tags, for instance, only work if they are consistently spread. We should participate as much as we can and understand that others are doing the same, without being too dependent on this kind of recognition.

The forum here at BlogRhet has one of the best formats I have found. I stuck my neck out and volunteered to be part of it, as a real newbie, was welcomed in and am really glad I joined. It's inclusive, stimulating and fun. It's managed by a bunch of horrifically busy women and so the bus wheels may occasionally wobble but, by and large, it's amazingly smooth. And really worthwhile. If you're reading this at my own site, please pop over and scroll through it. You'll be glad you did.

But in the final analysis, the feeling of belonging is something each of us has to create for herself. It comes from confidence that what we write will resonate with others and that other writers will appreciate our comments. Most of all, it comes from the satisfaction of having done well in what we set out to do.

Posted By Mary G -- Them's My Sentiments

Invisible = White

Guest Post from Dawn of Baleful Regards (originally posted at Baleful Regards.)

*** I started my TA position in Multicultural education today. I had forgotten how much I love this topic, but it came rushing back today as we started simply talking about some of the words and meanings.

This was from the first part of a thesis I wrote for my Master's degree. As I have said before this was a very, very long exploration from several angles - teacher, parent, citizen, wife and mother. This piece is about white privilege and learning to "see" that I had benefited in my culture simply from being white. I thought it was a good day to re-publish this piece, in honor of my journey beginning again.****


As an Early Childhood educator, I recognized the importance of this work on behalf of the children and families we serve. Without an exploration of our internal bias and recognition of the privileges that come from being white in a white society, how can we hope to welcome all families and children into the classroom? If, as a White college educated woman, I cannot recognize and be aware of the advantage that I am automatically granted as a member of the dominant culture, how can I truly advocate for all families and children? How can these families feel welcomed in a classroom in which I teach?

My mother-in-law in Detroit will often tell me that white people are crazy. I used to assume this was a kind of funny endearment. When I asked my husband about this, his response was “White People are crazy. She means it”. I have come to understand the meaning of this phrase, not as an endearment, but as an extremely serious statement.

I am fortunate. I am the white member of a black family from Detroit. They love me as a member of their family and I am afforded a unique view into a family from a race and culture other than my own. They view my questions and inquiries about these obvious issues with patience and love. The white culture in which I was raised did not openly address these topics and I am asking things to find out. I want to know because they are my family too, and because I am the mother of a bi-racial daughter, who will have to navigate these unsteady racial waters in ways that I never was required to think about.

When my mother in law says this phrase “White people are crazy” this is what she means. White People are the dominant culture in the United States. They are the holders of nearly all the political, social and economic power in our society. They design and control our government, our schools, and our legal system. White people control most of the media outlets – radio, television, and newspaper and book publishers. White people have designed a total system that grants them implicit favors and privileges as they navigate these systems. Yet, they blatantly, as a group, deny this. White people point to a select few of other racial heritage that have been successful as examples of the equality and fair treatment afforded to all Americans. White people will tell you how all of that discrimination “stuff” was in the past, that they had nothing to do with that. Most of the White people who say these things truly believe them. However, for American persons of other non-white heritage, this is a glaring un-truth. To co-opt a phrase from a twelve-step group – The elephant is in the room and only the white people can’t see it.

For my mother in law and husband, the refusal to “see” on the part of white people makes them crazy and untrustworthy. Terrance’s wife, her daughter in law and mother of her granddaughter is one of these white people. I am a white person and admit that I spent most of my life not seeing the elephant.

For my journey into the issues of anti-bias curriculum, the beginning came with my relationship with my husband. While there had been no overt statements of racial or other bias in my family, I was taken aback by the vehemence of my mother’s reaction when I announced my relationship with Terrance. The stream of racist and hateful language that flowed from my mother shocked and horrified me. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that if I was to go out with him that day, I could find another place to live and finance the rest of my college education. The threat was unveiled and clear. Walk away from the black man, or walk away from your comfortable life.

In those moments, I made a decision that would influence the rest of my life. I uncovered my mother as racist. I consciously walked away from the privileges of my white family. This action solidified my emerging sense that issues of race and culture were to be a crucial part of my personal and professional life. However, my liberal education and background was shaken to the core. My white liberal Democratic people were not supposed to react like this when confronted with issues of race. I was ashamed and embarrassed that my family behaved this way.

When I discovered the Anti Bias Curriculum shortly after my graduation from college in 1992, I felt as if it were a professional revelation. This was what I had been looking for! While the topic of “multi-cultural education” was broached during my teacher education at the University of Vermont, it was not a central part of the education of emerging teachers. Preparing white teachers in Vermont did not seem to necessitate the discussion of issues of race and culture in society. We were, on the whole, upper middle class white students, preparing to teach white students.

During this time, I was also falling in love with a man not of my racial heritage. I was experiencing, for the first time, the obviousness of race in an all white environment. Walking into restaurants or stores, I noticed other white people noticing us. My invisibility in my culture, of which I had never been aware, was no longer afforded to me when I walked beside Terrance. I had crossed over a line that I previously did not know existed.

With time, my assimilation into a dual cultural role became as second nature. I stopped noticing because life consumed my attention. A career, a marriage and then a new baby shifted my focus from issues of race and culture to those of every day life. Occasionally, I would be jolted from complacence into thinking about this uncomfortable topic. From the elderly white woman who approached me with my infant daughter inquiring when I “got” her to the white father who loudly inquired to me why the child care center was closed for Civil Rights Day when there were no black people here; these incidents were always unexpected and left me speechless. I had forgotten that as a white woman, without my husband nearby, I visibly re-integrated back into the dominant white culture. This invisibility seemed a tacit permission, allowing other white people to say things in my presence that they would not dare speak of with my husband at my side.

As an educator, I had done a fair amount of exploration into the topic of Anti-Bias curriculum while teaching in my own classrooms. In pursuing accreditation by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, it was a criterion to be integrated into the mission and philosophy of the child care center. As the director of this center, I led the conversations of this topic in order to infuse everything we planned with an awareness of the messages we were sending to all families. As a mother of a bi-racial infant daughter, I became more aware of the urgency of the message of Anti-Bias curriculum on the part of the families we served.

These were not always pleasant conversations with teachers or parents. I was accused of being Anti-Christian, Racist, a promoter of Homosexuality, and even told I was a person looking to psychologically damage young children by removing holidays from our center curriculum. I preserved. My personal agenda to make that child care center a place of welcome and support for all families and children became a consuming work. Those staff that did not agree with my vision of anti-bias curriculum eventually left and I found others who shared a similar vision and were willing to commit to it.

Our NAEYC validation visit was scheduled on Halloween of 1999. The validator remarked that she had never seen such a calm, peaceful child care center on Halloween in her career. There were no costumes or candy. There were no excluded children due to religious beliefs. While not perfection, we were living much closer to the intent of Louise Derman Sparks work in Anti Bias Curriculum. We were not standing on the traditions of “we’ve always done it this way”, but rather examining the motives behind our traditions. We asked, “Is this good for children and families?” and let the answers guide our curriculum and policies.