Are Social Networking Sites the Death or Rebirth of Journalism
Over the last few weeks, social networking sites have been featured in the news frequently due to their impact on the culture. It first became apparent to the news media with reports from the Mumbai terrorist attacks, but the real boom has been with Iran. But its not just political news that is affecting us, but any kind of news. Gamers just had their big convention event with E3 this year, and twitter and facebook were a big part of it. Now with San Diego Comic Con, we are probably going to be seeing even more people using social networking sites to get their news rather than the traditional online sites. The question that arised from the events in Iran, or the deaths of popular entertainment icons, is whether social networks are a good thing or a bad thing for journalism and for the people that read and absorb news.
The events in Iran, which I am using as an example due to the high amount of publicity it garnered, showed that perhaps the so called “traditional journalists” were falling behind in the times. Due to the fact that media has been banned in Iran, it was only through the efforts of the citizenry that any news other then from the government was allowed to break through. It wasnt until much later, after Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and others social networking sites broke the news, that traditional media started reporting. They started reporting with the disclaimer that these were not journalistic reports, but reports from the ground and from the citizens.
So what is considered journalism? According to The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel there are ten elements. The first is that Journalism is the obligation to the truth, that its first loyality is to the citizens, the essence of journalism is the dicipline of verification, its practitioners must maintain an independence from the stories they cover, it must serve as an independent monitor of power, must provide a forum for public criticism and comprimise, it must stive to make the significant interesting and relevent, it must keep the news comprehensive and proportional, its practitioners must be allowed to excercise their personal conscience and lastly added was it has the rights and responsibility of citizens.
Why do I bring up these elements? Because the news we received has only some of these elements. I can understand traditional journalists becoming aggravated due to the fact that these news stories are missing probably the most important job of a journalist next to actually reporting what they see. Independence from the topic at hand and the idea of verification. Now, with Iran there is no way to verify what is going on with the citizen journalists, anymore then at comic con when a fan has a chat with a comic creator and posts on his blog the “interview”.
But these sort of reporters are not unheard of, they are the new eyewitnesses to the news world. They are the deputy newsman that we turn to when there is no other outlet. The fact that major news networks have a disclaimer that these news reports are from the citizens both serves as a warning that there is some sort of bias by them, but also shows that they have their journalistic heart in the right place. Putting things up for public criticism, making the significant interesting, and most importantly: they are getting the news out there to the people that need to hear it.
Traditional Journalists have always used eyewitnesses and deputy journalists. There is no reason this tradition can no longer continue into the
Web 2.0 phase of our existence. Rather then just sending photographs, we send videos. Rather then interviews we see tweets. What is missing from the deputies is the ability to analyze and fact check. This is why the deputy journalists must work together with the traditional sheriff to both get the information out there quickly, accurately, and most of all with the heart of the people, but the restraint of an observer.
2 Responses to “Are Social Networking Sites the Death or Rebirth of Journalism”
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They’re neither. They’re just an alternate form of blogging, which isn’t new. You need more than one form of journalism. With Twitter, people only put basic summaries of events as it unfolds. Compacting everything together for a fluid read is another duty.
I look at twitter as just another site where you just get random silliness from. I doubt journalism in some form, will die or be reborn from it, cause there will always be the sites that report it in full. Besides, you’ll always get linked to it on twitter.