That 24/7 news cycle eats sloppy reporters for breakfast

by Will Hall

Factual accuracy in the news media is on the decline. A large number of journalists these days have traded accurate content for the faster production of stories with minimal effort.

Take the “Dog Meat Soup” media scandal for example, in which media satirist Joey Skaggs duped the media into including detailed verbatim conversations with individuals claiming to be representatives of a non-existent Dog Meat Soup business.

Or the 22-year-old Irish sociology student who incorrectly altered French composer Maurice Jarre’s Wikipedia webpage after the news of his death, to include false quotes that were repeated around the world by reputable new sources.

It has become increasingly apparent in many cases around the world, that the increased speed of news and information has put the accuracy of newspapers, news Web sites, radio and television news into question. But have the Internet and the World Wide Web really damaged journalism?

Since the introduction of the Internet by George Boole, and the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee, the world has changed monumentally in terms of information transfer. In the late 1970s, the Internet was an elusive system used by the U.S. military during the Cold War in case of nuclear Armageddon. The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was developed by the U.S. Department of Defense as a communications experiment linking hundreds of universities, research labs and defense contractors.

Now just 30 years later, almost one–quarter of the world’s population has access to the Internet. A study conducted by Internet World Stats Usage and Population Statistics estimated that as of Sept. 30, 2009, more than 1.7 billion people use the Internet regularly.

The Internet’s evolution has reformed the architectural structure of the news media. Although mass-circulation newspapers used to be the most dominant news medium, computer-based information network technologies appear to be pulling ahead.

One of the flaws in this complex system is that standards to deal with traditional mass media may be unnatural, unrealistic and almost impossible to apply in an environment where any participant may possibly be a message producer as well as a message receiver.

As media analyst Marshall McLuhan said, “The architectures of information technologies reflect the societal power relationships they embody. This observation is most poignant at moments of convergence, when old societal systems struggle to maintain their integrity within the context of the architecture defined by the new technology.”

In an industry whose essence demands reliable information, collecting information and certifying its factual accuracy is central for news organizations. This is a troublesome issue, as online news has come into disrepute for its unreliability.

Multimedia news also may create unrealistic expectations. For instance, a pivotal reason television consistently scores higher than newspapers as a credible source for news, has to do with the idea that “seeing is believing.”

Postmodern critics such as Jean Baudrillard detail how advanced media technology simulates events in such a way as to make them “hyper-real,” that is, better than real. Virtual reality can produce stimuli recognized as “real,” or plausible by the viewer.

Now imagine the effect of having access to print, audio, video and photographs along with the ability to access infinite amounts of information related to the subject matter streamed from anywhere in the world, with just a click of a button! The World Wide Web, in its immediacy, often spreads inaccurate news information almost instantly — a phenomenon referred to as “going viral.”

A great example of this is the “Balloon Boy Scandal.” The story went into overdrive around the world once news broke that a 6-year-old boy had hitched a ride on a homemade helium balloon 7,000 feet above Colorado. The boy’s confession that he had been hiding at home the entire time led to criminal charges for his parents, a lot of easily fooled news stations and up to seven million hits online.

With the popularity of easily accessible news exploding, corporate owners and managers of news organizations see a means for lowering labor costs and an ability to expand old markets, essentially maximizing their profits. But this strategy has its consequences, as George Gerbner, Bell Atlantic Professor of Telecommunications at Temple University, wrote: “The basic problem of journalism is media conglomeration and the consequent reduction of staff, diversity and time to do an adequate job. For journalists, newspaper technology means further loss of control to a few wholesalers and global marketers of media software.”

Internet-based media have other teething pains. Video and audio are overused — often provided for novelty rather than value. In a poll of members of the national news media, almost two-thirds believed the Internet is injuring journalism. The poll, conducted by the Atlantic and National Journal, asked 43 media professionals whether journalism has been helped or hurt more by the increase of online news, and 65 percent said journalism has been hurt more, while 34 percent said it has been helped.

Multimedia news can be as deceptive as it is informative. Anybody with access to the Internet and a fundamental understanding of how to post information on Web sites can be a source.

Consequently, anybody of any demographic or any profession can potentially have a voice. Therefore the Internet and other elements of computer-based news and information services have become flooded with unfiltered content. As a result, professional news organizations are increasingly suspicious of their nonprofessional rivals. Yet journalists, in their quest to beat the deadline, will sometimes use these fabricated or inaccurate sources.

The Internet and the World Wide Web have not been completely detrimental. The Internet has done a world of good for journalism and its recipients. For one thing, traditional media moving into the virtual world can capitalize on their reputation. The Internet has created a fanciful, infinite medium specifically for the sending and receiving of information. The new media have opened up and completely changed the way society receives news. Ithiel de Sola Pool, an advocate of online media and a pioneer in the development of social science, argues that because online media is less controlled by government regulation and the information online is abundant in supply, it “allows for more knowledge, easier access, and freer speech.”

Digital media are the ultimate forum for pushing the boundaries of expression. Active news audience participation is a positive attribute of a healthy democracy.

While this is good for society, is it good for the industry as well? True, news organizations have the ability to supply audiences with news as it is happening, by providing print, video and audio material. Audiences, intrigued by issues and wishing to pursue it further, can access URLs often located at the end of newspaper columns that sometimes contain more information than just the print article.

Consequently, multimedia news has the best of both print and broadcast. Online journalism provides the immediacy of TV and radio, as well as the space to provide an audience with more detail than is offered in print mediums. The reader is in control. He can choose what or how much information he wants and how to use it.

There is a disadvantage to this, however, as it takes a lot of people to produce the photographs, the video and the audio required to magnetize an audience. The consequence is that it becomes too expensive for many media outlets.

With the Internet and World Wide Web, journalists tend to use a variety of media to create a “super-story,” commonly known as multimedia, which explores other aspects of news stories in more detail. Obviously, this provides an audience with a more detailed account of the news, but due to its multi-faceted nature, it can also uncover truths that cannot be explored through just one medium. This online convergence is the direct result of the popularity of the Internet and its capabilities.

Ultimately, the Internet has been a huge influence on journalism as a whole. It has reformed the media and directed the industry in multiple directions, as a consequence, changing it forever.

We have seen the decline of journalistic skill, but the increase in the immediacy of news, diversity, opinion and pluralistic competition between news outlets. How multimedia applications are utilized and how accurate these stories are, however, is still up to journalists.