ss521013@ohio.edu
Slow news day? No stories pouring in? Then make one up.
 |
| Source: http://www.robertabalos.com |
That’s exactly what our culture enables many journalists to do. A writer is a writer is a writer--that’s what I’ve been told in every journalism class I’ve taken. A degree makes a writer more educated and more capable of being an ethical, well-spoken journalist, sure, but with today’s almost limitless access to technology, uh, anywhere, stories can come from all over, often from writers with less-than-golden ideals.
Part and parcel with that access to technology comes the access to anonymity. All it takes is a basic WordPress URL (or $18 for a plain .com URL), some HTML and anyone can have a credible-looking news site ready to post whatever they want. This same anonymity can grant journalists in the business the ability to press fake stories under a pseudonym. Do they? Maybe. The majority of the fake news circulating in the past year or so, however, has come from people who are only too happy to slap their byline on the story for all to see.
The difference between ethical journalists and “journalists” who press fake stories is simple: truth. It’s meant to be the journalist’s core pursuit, and any fresh-eyed graduate will tell you that of course, they’re committed to the truth.
So why all the fabrication? Why are once considered credible news sources spreading stories that are clearly, after two seconds of Googling, untrue?
Well, it’s not always intentional. There is a fabricator out there somewhere -- a hits junkie who sits at his screen and watches the view meter tick up as gullibles fall for it, an enterprising journalist who thinks no one will find out, but often the fake stories that end up circulated go around far beyond the fabricator.
Social media is a huge chunk of technology. It is literally everywhere. Any savvy news website has social media bookmarklets hooked directly into their articles pages, so they can be shared instantly. The danger of this is the insta-sharing itself. News can spread instantly. Minutes after a story is posted, it has the ability to be everywhere: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and, arguably most importantly, other news sites.
This issue of fabrication and the spreading of fabricated stories all circles back to confirmation. One of the incidents that I kept a close eye on was the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. It was reported by NPR’s David Folkenflik that Giffords had died after being shot in the head during a speech when, in fact, she had not. Journalist Julie Moos compiled a report detailing a blow-by-blow account of the various and conflicting reports posted and printed that day.
Was Folkenflik’s report a fabrication? Yes. Is he a hyper-speed, driven liar determined to make the whole of Facebook fall for the next “share this and contribute three cents to this cancer fund” hoax? No. He reported what he thought was true without bothering to confirm it, and because NPR is such a reputable source, the story was immediately picked up by other credible news sources.
Another equally politically-driven fake story was the “1 percent tip” story. During Occupy Wall Street, a receipt was posted online supposedly showing a receipt from a Newport Beach restaurant that had a 1 percent tip amount marked, as well as an arrow pointing to a section of the check that read, “Get a real job.” The source for the photo, a now-defunct WordPress site with the URL futureexbanker.wordpress.com, claimed to be an insider whose boss had left the receipt. HuffPost put up an expose about the incident that concluded the receipt had indeed been altered from the copies kept on file at the restaurant.
Unlike Folkenflik, the creator of this story was one of our hyperspeed hit junkies, hoping to hop on the Occupy Wall Street movement and fuel the fire. What’s the saying? “Some men just want to watch the world burn.” And that one sure did a fine job.
What should journalists take from these two incidents? A lesson: err on the side of caution. Remember that the curse that brings us insta-sharing and fake news stories that look real also brings you access to Google anywhere you walk. A little research goes a long way in protecting your credibility.
No comments:
Post a Comment