Alaska Airlines Attacked by Blog Mob with Pitchforks and Torches

Ok, blogosphere. You’ve had your idiotic, ill-advised fun. It’s time to calm down now.

Yes, Alaska Airlines screwed up big time by hiring under-qualified baggage handlers and underreporting previous ramp incidents. And yes, Jeremy Hermanns has a right to blog about his incredibly frightening experience aboard the Alaska Airlines MD-80 that lost cabin pressure at 26,000 feet because an inept baggage handler put a foot long gash in the fuselage.

But the blogosphere’s response to the whole thing is beyond ridiculous. Jeremy Hermann’s allegation that one or more Alaska Airlines employees were posting comments on his blog, and the insinuation that this was done with the full blessing of the company is absurd. And the subsequent echo-chamber maelstrom in the blogosphere isn’t going to solve anything. If Alaska employees were in fact commenting on Jeremy’s blog from Alaska IP addresses, then they exercised incredibly poor judgment and should be disciplined by their company. But really - they’re allowed to have opinions, too. And their opinions don’t necessarily represent the opinions or official position of their employer.

I’m going to give Jeremy the benefit of the doubt on this one because he’s obviously traumatized and rightfully ticked off at Alaska. But the rest of you have no such excuse. You’ve run amok with a completely unsubstantiated claim and you’ve taken the hard-won credibility of the blogosphere down several dozen notches in the process. You all ought to be spanked! I won’t do you the favor of sending any Google juice your way, but will instead refer readers to Dave Taylor’s post on the subject for examples of what I’m talking about.

I agree with Dave all the way on this one. Truth still matters, and if the blogosphere hopes to be taken seriously as a new frontier of citizen journalism, then we’re going to need to set aside rampant speculation and learn to deal in facts instead of innuendoes and half-truths.

I had hoped that 2005 would end on a better note than this. Today, I am ashamed to be a blogger.