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Audiences today want accuracy and they want it now. The media is under massive amounts of pressure to not only break a news story within minutes, but also to have all of the facts then and there, ready for consumption. In reality, this can rarely be done successfully and journalists and news sources alike must make a decision: break the story, or correct the facts?
Transparency
Truth-seeking has always been a fundamental part of the ethical codes used by journalists. But as news mediums have developed and forums have expanded, so too has this undeniable desire for the truth. Journalists today must take into account both independence and transparency in order to remain accountable and trustworthy in the eyes of their audiences. The Society of Professional Journalists breaks down the distinction between the two in their updated code of ethics.
Transparency in journalism is crucial for gaining credibility and building a trust between reporters and audiences. Without trust in your reporting, audiences will flock to the hundreds of other sources made readily available to them through today's technology. In order to combat this, journalists must be willing and open to sharing their sources and reasoning behind a story to sustain an open dialogue between readers and reporters. The greater the transparency, the bigger the audience.
Immediacy
There is no denying the immediacy of news today. With growing public forums such as twitter, news stories are broken instantly by eyewitnesses and it has become a growing expectation of journalists and news sources to be able to provide an explanation and substantial information from the moment a big story breaks. The clear problem with this is the disjunct between the time it takes to fact-check and gain accurate information on a story and the speed at which news of that same story travels across mediums, time-zones, and borders.
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The news of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut broke within minutes, and journalists had to scramble on-air to organize the facts and the information flowing in from multiple sources. However, when stories such as the tragedy at Sandy Hook develop on air, sources and information are often limited, causing news crews to make a decision between waiting to report confirmed information to the audience, or going with what they initially hear, risking the potential to report false information.
Why does it matter?
The relationship between transparency and immediacy is continually developing, and will do so as long as new technology continues to influence the media. As is clear to all news consumers today, audiences want their information to be upheld to both standards at all times.However, capacity is often a limiting factor to transparency. With news stories breaking immediately, little time is given to develop substantial information and thus breaking news stories are often extremely short with little to no information actually known about a story when word comes in.
Capacity is limited even further because of the heavy reliance upon twitter as a news source. With only 140 characters, it often takes dozens of tweets to report all vital information on a story, and with the popularity of the retweet, once a piece of information is out there, whether it is accurate or not, it is not coming back. It is a challenge of journalism today to find a way to intertwine the need for transparency in the news, while also retaining the immediacy we have gained due to continued improvements in technology.
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