Give The People What They Need To Hear

Miki McIntyre
mm037213@ohio.edu

In today’s society, news is constantly changing in so many aspects. This can range from the way we access content, the impact of social media, and even the accuracy of our news, something that should be the least of worries when it comes to catching up with the world.

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Our outlets for news ranges from so many different types of websites, newspapers, magazines, etc. One example of what’s considered unique is Buzzfeed. This company is well known for very unusual blog posts and online quizzes ranging from “What kind of mother will you be?” to “What type of salad dressing are you?” The Columbia Journalism Review, however, released a whole different side to the website.

More importantly, Buzzfeed is known to not be as reliable as other sources. Why you may ask? Until recently, Buzzfeed never once looked into hiring any copy editors for their posts.

Now one could potentially argue that yes, our world is always advancing and adapting to new quirks. News, however, should not be altered and it’s necessary to have journalists’ not only double check their own work, but also have a professional run through and fact check the information.

This issue comes down to not only grammatical errors, but also changes made to the story after it’s been published online. An article from The Los Angeles Times discusses the dilemma and addresses the constant urge for new sites like New York Times or Associated Press to compete and see who’s first to posting the latest breaking story. 

In these cases, any sort of fact checking or confirmations can be rare as these sites are mainly worried about gaining an audience to go to their website first. 

The biggest issue with this is that most of the time, these pages are constantly making changes to their story because they have that sort of access.  With the exposure to social media nowadays, audiences can be fooled easily by reading these stories without making sure the information is accurate. From that point, stories can go viral and soon, they can be shared via Facebook and other applications without being absolutely precise.

From a journalists’ perspective, this topic is very sensitive because it is their job to provide news that is correct and error-free. It is best from an audiences point of view to simply look into what they believe is the truth. 

Columbia Journalism Review released an article discussing the best ways for a reader to determine which news providers are trustworthy. The top three criteria included a reporters desire to respond to an error in a timely manner, their consideration on ethical matters including constant following of the story, and the reporters ability to present notable features in a story. Strong characteristics for this involve maintaining an unbiased perspective and a calm attitude.

Overall, it has become a frustrating topic for the American people to consistently hear news that may seem true at first, but then soon realize that all the information presented is not necessarily accurate. 

It becomes exhausting if anything to hear different opinions from certain stories rather than having one true story published for the world to see that has been fact checked and is 100% reliable. For now, the best thing for audiences to do is check their research and make sure what they are reading is dependable and unchanging.