Sunday, November 2, 2014

The Onion Forces Fact Checking by Journalists

Justin McCauley
jm257310@ohio.edu


Technology is becoming more advanced everyday, along with technology also social media is becoming more and more relevant to journalists as another tool in their belt. Not only can journalist use social media to promote their own stories and connect with fans better, but they can learn of breaking news as it is happening and discover stories through it. Well as much as that is a good tool for journalists it is also brings to attention how important  fact-checking is. Journalists have to be more diligent then ever nowadays with websites like The OnionThe Borowitz Report, and several other sites. These sites take pride in reporting fake news that is humorous and different then the "boring" typical news story. They take even more pride in what they do when a journalist or a reporter picks up the story and reports it.

It has become so easy for people to report fake things on Twitter, and other social media sites that the model of you have to report it first is slowly going out the window. The moment you try to quickly report a story that turns out to be not 100% true you instantly take a shot in the credibility column. Creditability is one of the most important things for a journalist to have, if the public doesn't trust you and believe what you are reporting on then why are you doing your job. On twitter you always see stories and tweets of celebrities "dying" and most of these turn out to be fake and the other day I saw an article about how The Onion has fooled reporters some many time that their is a top ten list. I think that journalists today have todo there due diligence and not only report on stories quickly but correctly. The first story isn't always as important as the first correct story out there. If your are the third person post and article on a story but they only one that goes in depth and double checked the facts and talked to people your story will be more popular then the first two because there not as in depth and might not be 100% correct.

A lot of this is unchartered territory for journalist. Many of them have been taught the old school way and even the early ways of how to handle all the different social media sites have drastically changed over the last few years. It will always continue to change as the technology changes and how the field of journalism decided how it will adjust to it along the way.So as the years continue to go by there will always be people out there trying to sneak one by the journalists with fact quotes or a fake story. So I think that when it comes to the social networks sites you have to trust no one and only trust yourself because if you don't that is how you get burned and you don't want to end on shows like the Daily Show or the butt of a comedians joke.








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