If you can’t defend it, don’t publish it

In his lecture for the Bloggers Kapihan, Victor Villanueva gave four tips to new bloggers. One of them is worth expounding further, and in context of what had happened in the blogosphere recently.

His four tips are as follows:

1. Know what you are saying.
2. Try to be visual.
3. Link up.
4. Go out.

For the first tip, he said the following:

* Be prepared to face the consequence(s) of what you write.
* Be prepared for confrontation.
* Deleting (or locking) entries can be futile.

Let me discuss his first tip and apply it in the context of the the Malu Fernandez controversy and the Cris Mendez case.

Bloggers took note of the mean things Malu Fernandez had said about Filipinos in general, and they blogged about it. The posts range from intellectual ones down to outright ad hominem attacks. The comments were worst. Fernandez isssued an apology and resigned from the publications who published her articles. The daily did not accept her resignation.

A show on a cable news channel took notice of what had happened, and they had invited several bloggers and journalists for a discussion. The bloggers were put on the defensive, as if the problem began with the bloggers, and the show never even bothered dealing with what Malu Fernandez wrote. Aside from an implicit validation that blogging is a new avenue for information (which for some journalists is a direct competition), it somehow made me reflect on blogging at that point.

When the time comes that a blogger has to take a stand, he has to think hard about it; when he does take a stand and blog about it, he should expect that someone will contradict him. And if the blog post is controversial enough, the blogger should expect negative comments. He should be prepared to explain, to answer questions, to receive brickbats.

Which leads me to the next issue.

Dr. Tess Termulo pointed to a blog post at a certain social networking site where the blogger said something controversial enough to merit comments that are against the blogger’s idea. The blogger cannot defend her assertions, so she locked the entry so that only a select few can read and post comments.

Remember what Bikoy had said? “Be prepared to face the consequence of what you write.” “Be prepared for confrontation.” “Deleting blog entries can be futile.”

That blogger should have attended Bloggers’ Kapihan.

You are free to write about what you feel and what you think. When you publish it for the entire world to read, expect that someone will disagree. That someone will express his disagreement. He will point out why you are wrong. There will be confrontation. If you cannot defend what you have written, if you cannot face confrontation, you are only defeating yourself. You are only showing that your stand is weak, your opinion untenable.

And locking a blog post is like deleting it – it is futile. Going back to that locked post that Dr. Termulo had pointed out, The Jester-in-Exile had managed to read the post, and published that post in his blog, together with his comments blasting the locked post to bits.

Blogging is not as simple as journal or diary writing. In writing a diary, only you can read what you write. When you blog, it can be read by everyone with an access to the Internet. I suggest that you think first, and think hard, before clicking the Publish button. If you can’t defend it, don’t blog about it. You are only putting yourself to the slaughterhouse.

UPDATE:

While this blog post is old, it is a classic example of how the blogosphere works, and ultimately, how a flawed commentary should be addressed – blasting all arguments to bits.