On Responsible Blogging

It was otherwise a lazy afternoon when suddenly I saw a tweet from a media outfit announcing that a bomb has just exploded inside a passenger bus along EDSA-Buendia on January 25, 2011.

Minutes later, several other tweets appeared and confirmed the incident.

I posted the bomb explosion news update on my other blog to let my (very few) followers know of what has just happened. Interestingly after several minutes, my blog post brought in a lot of traffic on my site, and the once inactive blog has got itself at least 600 visitors in just a few hours.

If there's one truth that we can get from the above situation, it is that 'blogging has evolved itself from just a personal diary into a source of important information'.

Given that, the time has come when bloggers and online article writers are now being called to become more responsible in what they write and what they put in their respective blogs.

Such same sentiment has also been the subject of intrigue, buzz and debate the previous week because of a Sunday Inquirer Article by Margaux Salcedo (Please Don't Give Blogging a Bad Name), wherein she pointed out that bloggers are now being used (knowingly or unknowingly) by PR Firms to 'extort' money from prospective clients.

A PR firm, Margaux exposes, asks money from a Restaurant owner, in exchange for either giving good reviews about the restuarant's food; or in exchange for not giving bad reviews.



Today, blogging is not just a sympathetic friend who absorbs our heartaches, rants, and thoughts about our life. Blogging has become a very powerful tool that will allow us to either say truth or lie.

The choice is ours.