That disparate attitude toward trust is something we see play out often—and certainly in the case of the Scalia story, in which the bloggers went out of their way to correct the record, flagrantly and loudly, while the mainstream outlet did so more quietly. HuffPo readers, if they look at the outlet’s Scalia piece, come away with a much fuller picture—of the broader Scalia story, its movement through a kind of group-moderated fact-checking process—than the Tribune readers do.
Though the preferred stereotype of the blogosphere, as portrayed by external viewers, is of a kind of ethical Wild West in which there are few rules and even fewer outlets interested in following them (“freewheeling” is one of the kinder descriptors)…their reaction to the Scalia story is only the latest bit of evidence of blogs’ development of mechanisms by which to cultivate trust. These mechanisms have been organic, to be sure—they’ve sprung up individually, rather than by professional fiat, and they have often been the results of coevolution. But they have quickly taken on a universality suggestive of external mandate. They’ve taken on, in other words, the guise of professionalization—even as they’ve been defined precisely by their lack thereof.
Indeed, in the same way that professionalization—and codes of ethics along with it—was an evolutionary adaptation that helped newspapers to thrive in the media environment of the early twentieth century… today, in the blogosphere, shared norms of behavior—voluntary adopted, as before—are helping online outlets to thrive. The Scalia story is yet another piece of evidence that the “freewheeling” blogosphere is, in its own way, professionalizing: it’s developing shared standards that are aimed, as similar standards were for the MSM, at cultivating trust. “CORRECTION:”—updating stories in real time, in a can’t-miss-it manner—is one of those standards. Mistakes, particularly as the speed of our news cycle shifts into ‘warp,’ will happen. The distinction—and the trust—comes in how outlets choose to fix them.
Thanks to Megan for a little hard research. Now if it can become part of the furniture of every MSM journalist that people on the political Left also lie, distort, act out of self-interest (material, status-based), have their nasty little bigotries . . . After all, the Scalia quote got around because their is an infrastructure of activists peddling this stuff.
After the fake quotes attributed to Rush Limbaugh made it at the speed of light to the MSM (I mean you, Rick Sanchez) without much checking, I'd like genuinely honest journalists exercise the same degree of credulity about quotes and statistics produced by liberal sources - as well as doing the same amount of ideological labelling for the consumer's benefit - as are already employed toward conservative ones. Also some assumption that these folks are just as greedy, self-interested, etc., as their opponents are would help.
#1 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Thu 29 Oct 2009 at 01:45 PM
Undoubtedly it can be fast, convenient and inexpensive to obtain information from the Internet. However, we should not ignore the potential threat—lack of credibility. When viewers take information circulated on the Internet for granted, they can fall into the pitfall of getting all wrapped up in inaccuracies.
In this case, the misquote of Supreme Court Justice Scalia by a local newspaper was swiftly picked up and cross-quoted in several blogs without checking. Sometimes, a public figure or an organization just tosses control of storytelling into the eager and distorting hands of countless bloggers, critics and competitors with hidden agendas.
It is a valuable lesson for journalists and bloggers: Always check your source; do not assume the burden of accuracy was on the original source. It is not and should not be. With social media’s transformational impact on journalism, it takes uncompromised dedication to truth and transparency to disseminate news.
As for Public Relations practitioners, they need to remain vigilant and to react quickly when mistakes start circulating online. More often than not, erroneous information can spread across the Internet at a horrifying speed without viewer discretion.
#2 Posted by Shuyan Liang, CJR on Wed 4 Nov 2009 at 12:15 PM