Malu Fernandez Strikes Again, Calling Bloggers Slackers and Lonely People
Malu Fernandez, the Manila Standard Today lifestyle writer who earned the ire of the Philippine blogging crowd with her elitist comments against OFWs, is at it again. This time, she’s turned the tables on bloggers and calls them slackers and lonely people.
… But blogging, aside from Perez Hilton and the other big time bloggers (you know who you are) is for me a slacker job or a medium and pastime for lonely people to connect. Unless you’re in bloody Siberia or in a Gulag prison, try stepping outside your comfort zone and turn off the laptop or pc, you just might find some real live people to talk to instead of typing away in cyber space.
She then points out the difference between journalists and bloggers.
The difference between a journalist and a blogger is that journalists have to adhere to certain guidelines that govern the freedom of speech. And whatever a journalist chooses to write about—be it popular or unpopular—we do not hide behind an anonymous name and are resigned to the fact that we have to take as much as we dish out.
In the end, she admits she might as well be blamed for all this nasty behavior, but still discredits those who give their reactions anonymously.
I suppose I started some kind of trend by eliciting nasty comments and reactions via blog because of my indiscretion. But it seems to be a comfortable medium for people to vent their anger on just about everything they disagree with. I have been called an irresponsible journalist so what does that make you? It is easy to hide under the guise of anonymity you can say just about anything you want because you have no repercussions to deal with. It’s easy to hide behind a false moniker isn’t it?
If I were her, I wouldn’t be so quick to compare blogging and journalism, especially if she’s not much better at writing (or rambling? or whining?) than the next blogger. (And I could still wonder if she deserves the job based on skill alone, but that would be a waste of time. That, or realize you can’t expect much from lifestyle writers anyway. Chicken or egg?)
The similarities end at the written word. And sweeping generalizations are logical fallacies.
Is blogging a slacker job? It depends on how you blog. If Malu Fernandez has not taken time out to write a comprehensive blog post, possibly one more substantial than her columns, then she does not earn the right to conclude that blogging is a slacker job.
Are bloggers lonely people that need to get out more? Again, it depends on who you’re talking to. Perhaps to Malu Fernandez, mingling at cocktail parties is enough, but to other bloggers, creating a meaningful conversation or even a meaningful friendship can be achieved through blogging.
Should we banish anonymity on the internet? Absolutely not. Should we consider writing and commenting using a real name better than writing and commenting using a fake or anonymous name? No.
And finally…
Do we need to care about someone like Malu Fernandez? Not really.
