Blogging Becomes an Official News Source?

Watching the news lately, I hear many references to a "blogger" somewhere stating opinion or fact and using that as the basis for the story.  I dislike the fact that just because someone posts something on their blog, as I am doing now, this gives legitimacy to what is posted and makes it news-worthy.

Granted, there are many worthy news makers or reporters who have blogs to help share their stories.  However, just because someone blogs well, or often, does not make them necessarily credible enough to quote in a news story or go as far as to make a post a news story - especially on the national scene.  In fact, in many cases, when I hear this, I rarely hear the reference as to WHO this blogger is.  It's like the story is good enough to discuss on a national news broadcast, but doesn't have the right legitimacy to be credited enough to have a name.

Folks, you will hear many things in life.  Depending on the source, and the influence this source has on you, you should be making your own judgments.  There are precious few people in this world I would take information from 100% without question.  Everyone else, even those surprisingly close to me, will have some level of "doubt" in my mind as to the authenticity or truth behind their words.  Not that these folks are out to deceive me.  Perhaps they are, but I am more concerned with people's inability to completely search fact before they dispense information.  So many people spit out information based on "something they heard" or "something someone told them."  I am not saying we need to question everything.  Some pieces of information require more thought and research than others.  Someone telling me of a sale at Macy's is not going to have the same scrutiny from me as the "fact" that there has been a major policy shift on the national government scene.

Opinions are easy to find.  Facts, real facts, are much harder to locate.  And even real facts can be tainted to fit an agenda, slant, or personal opinion or experiences.  Leaving parts of the fact out, like quoting only parts of a speech for example, can completely change the real meaning or real fact to be slightly different.  There are also almost always more than one side to any given story or fact.

I'd love to see us be better informed people.  And when I say informed, I don't just mean having knowledge, but more about having wisdom.  Discerning the difference between fact, partial fact, or complete fiction is not always easy.  Sometimes you need to look for yourself and find the real truth.  The more someone proves to be spot-on, the less you need to follow up on your own regarding facts coming from this person.  Over time, people like that can be considered a reputable and trustworthy source of factual information, void of the clutter we so many times like to fill our "facts" with.