Why blog?

Back to the business of blogging. The Frontline Club is hosting a debate tonight to mark World Press Freedom Day, asking if blogging is about self-exposure or self-expression.
Ignoring for a moment the implication that blogging may be analagous to flashing I've got to take issue with question.
'Blogging' is the ability to self-publish. As such it's a technical term not an editorial one. What I mean by that is that it's about how not what. Lumping all blogging together isn't helpful. One blogger may be a diarist, another a commentator, another a journalist. Hence why a code for all bloggers is misguided. Hence why saying things like 'Very few of them [bloggers] bother with such niceties as fact-checking' - as it does in the introduction to tonight's debate - is misleading.
Where the discussion this evening is timely is in it's coordination with World Press Freedom day. The ability to self-publish has enabled people in countries with repressive, authoritarian governments to say things they could not otherwise say, and to enable free speech. Many have taken this opportunity and been punished for it. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists 1 in 3 journalists jailed worldwide is now publishing on the net (49 of 134 - info on WAN's site). And PEN says that it recorded 'over 80 attacks against writers and journalists in sixteen countries who had used the internet to get around censorship' in 2004. The figure is likely to be much higher now with increased access.
More difficult to assess is the impact of political blogging within established democracies - an issue Kevin Marsh, one of tonight's panelists, takes up in his blog. Marsh questions how blogging will help increase trust in politicians or political reporting (A: he thinks it won't).
I'm looking forward to what should be an interesting discussion.