Linking out lends blogs credibility and avoids charges of obfuscation. Citing sources in this way should be the standard
In my morning trawl through the internet recently, I noticed two examples of a practice that has become mainstream: denying the object of your opprobrium a link.
First, the fascinating Brian Kellet writes this, in a fisk of a Liz Jones column about the NHS says:
"I'm not going to link to the original story because I don't want to send visitors to the rag that is the Daily Mail."
Then, in a battle of the pseudonyms, highly respected legal blogger Jack of Kent decides that he is going to have an argument with Guido Fawkes, but without actually namechecking Guido or linking to the ridiculous death penalty campaign he just launched.
I'm particularly disappointed in Jack of K, as he writes, in his very next post, that one should "use links and sources wherever possible".
Linking out, regardless of whether you agree with the person you're linking to, should be the standard for blogging, just as it is for academia. It is the link to sources which gives the work credibility.
In contrast, anonymous gossip disguised as lobby reporting is one of the reasons why there is so little trust in journalists at the moment (a topic discussed at the recent Polis journalism conference, where I asked a panel of spin doctors and hacks whether the press should abolish anonymous sources) … and the fact that a tabloid does not have to cite its sources is one of the reasons why #Hackgate could happen.
Moreover, we know that our online bubbles are not as diverse as we like to think. Safe silos like Facebook actually filter content to prioritise those people that you already agree with, and our failure to link out just strengthens the confirmation bias.
I disagree with Paul Staines's worldview and his approach to blogging, but I do actually want to know what he is saying about the death penalty, the better to campaign against him.
So, just as we've stopped using the Blame The Daily Mail cliche as a substitute for actual political analysis, can we have a moratorium on the whole "I'm not linking to those people" schtick, please?
I know we can Google pretty much anything we want to these days, but not everything appears on page one of the results. Worse, a failure to link looks a bit sly and scheming. Let's leave the obfuscation and misdirection to those outlets with lower standards: the newspapers.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/05/link-linking-out-blogs
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