News Through Social Media

Caroline Glaser
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My generation is the generation that has grown up with all the modern technology of the world. We were the ones that were operating laptops, computers, iPhones and iPods at a young age. This has changed the way we do many things such as communicate and how often we do so. It also has greatly changed the ways we view our news.

Growing up, I always had a strong passion for the news because it was my dream to be on the screen some day reporting. I used to pick up the newspaper before school and read it at the kitchen table. My definition of reading however would better be described as skimming. I would first look at the pictures and then decide which articles I wanted to read. When I received my first iPhone my sophomore year in high school my world became so much easier thanks to one social media site: Twitter.

Twitter allowed me to follow local and national news publications ranging from E News to Local 12 news in Cincinnati. It allowed me to read the headlines of many breaking news stories or feature articles and choose to click the highlighted blue link if the headline struck my interest. This allows me to take any spare time I have and dedicate it to educating myself about what is happening around the world. I also am able to log onto another commonly used social media site, Facebook, and see what links people have shared. On Facebook one can choose to share these links to promote the news story or simply just pass them up.

With this being said, with freedom of speech and rush to be the first to break the news, errors are often made. Like I said earlier, it is so easy to spread and share the information, so when one person tweets a story link that has invalid information it often spreads like a wildfire and many people are left with false information.

For example last June a very creditable news organization CNN released an article on Twitter saying that President Obama’s health care act had been overturned. They later released a story claiming that in the rush to get the information out there they made a “hugely embarrassing error.” If large corporations like CNN are doing it then small news outlets with less employers are doing it as well.

However Twitter also works well to break stories when other news outlets aren’t there for the breaking news. In January 2009, US Airways flight 1549 went down on the Hudson River shortly after take off. Onlooker Jim Hanrahan broke news of the daring landing on Twitter, a full 15 minutes before mainstream news outlets. He claimed he just watched the plane crash and stepped in and served as the reporter. He was the first to capture the picture and release it to the press as well.

There are many ways when social media can be both beneficial and destructive. It is up to reporters and journalists to take a step back and review all the facts before releasing the information to any social media outlet. People have to be responsible and ethical on social media to ensure that it can serve as a creditable news outlet. 

Parents need to start monitoring what their children are posting on their Facebook and Twitter. They also need to play an active role in teaching their kids to post only what they know is true. If this is done the future for journalism can only get brighter.