Three Strikes And You're Out

Kelsey Hoak
kh605810@ohio.edu

Digital Media Era

In this age of digital media journalists face difficult issues of whether or not they can trust all sources enough to "break" news. We all want to be first and now that social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook are where a majority of people get their news, we want to have breaking news on our accounts.

As a journalist, I am following dozens of news organizations to stay updated on current news. Part of me always wants to retweet the first breaking news tweets I see, but you have to be careful. Some news sites have been known to put out information that they haven't verified and it turns out to be false.

Social Media Rapid Updating

Over the last few years America has seen plenty of terrorist acts where dozens of innocent bystanders have been killed. These incidents have led to breaking news stories coming from all media outlets. For example, CNN spent days covering the Boston bombings, and they were caught up in a mishap after just a few hours of coverage.

The problem with social media is that journalists are willing to risk credibility just to get the information out fast enough. There is a sense of gambling involved here. If I break the news that I have the name of the person arrested and it is correct then I am going to gain thousands of followers, but if I post it and I am wrong, how many will I lose? What if I get on and retract my statement? Or apologize for being incorrect? In reality how many times can a news source apologize before they completely lose all credibility? It might start to rely on a three strikes and you're out format.

mashable.com (hackers take over @foxnewspolitics)

It is not okay to sacrifice correct information for time. Stepping out of my journalist shoes and putting on my American citizen ones, I would much rather hear a story seven minutes later knowing that someone took those few extra minutes to verify all of the information. If I read the story that came out immediately that wasn't verified I could be learning false information that I would then tell my coworker and it would spread like wildfire. It takes more than just a retraction and an apologetic tweet to fix the life of the person you just falsely identified as a terrorist.

Sometimes Social Media Helps

There are times when social media can help the public gather news. During the San Francisco airplane crash earlier this past summer one of the passengers on the plane tweeted out information that everyone seemed okay and he attached a photo of the burning plane. Without his initial tweet, media would have been left in the dark for a little bit longer. Traditional media wasn't able to reach the location of the crash.

This new age of social media lets journalists rely on more eye witness accounts. It is easier to locate the people who were actually at the scene. Before journalists had to track down phone numbers or pray that they could find them at the scene hours after for a quick interview. Now we can just search a hashtag and search for the person with the first tweets and send them a direct message.

Photos are also available to us at the click of a button. It would seem like life is getting easier for professional journalists, but then again we are competing with John and Jane Doe, who write a blog from their basement and didn't spend a day in j-school.