Social Media has Forced Journalists to be Transparent

Dan Justik
dj204915@ohio.edu

Over the past several years, the profession of journalism has been forced into making some critical changes. For the most part, the key component of creating change in journalism has been the rapid growth of social media. It has forced media organizations to change how they post their pieces, but it has also changed how open journalists are about their stories.

The one biggest change in journalism that social media has created is having more transparency from the journalist to the readers. As readers become more connected to stories than ever before, social media has allowed them to call out the reporter for mistakes or fundamental errors in their stories.

Instead of buying newspapers or watching the news, social media has become the main source of news for the average American adult. Not only can a citizen find their news on social media, but they can also interact with the reporter or writer of the story.

Courtesy of Pew Research Center

Before social media, it was extremely difficult for a reader to get in touch with the writer of the story. And even if a reader was able to contact the writer, the writer seemingly had no obligation to respond, or even acknowledge what that reader said to them.

But with social media and everybody being able to see what someone says, there are times that journalists almost have no other choice but to respond with their readers. If a journalist is called out on social media for an error or a mistake and refuses to acknowledge it, there is a good chance that the journalist will lose some credibility.

The threat of losing credibility on social media has caused some major publications to create pieces in order to show how a story is put together. One publication that showed how they broke a news story was The Washington Post, who created a video with the journalists who broke the story about a politician allegedly sexual assaulting teenage girls in his past.

With the rise of people believing that any story is 'fake news,' a journalist being transparent on social will discredit any person that calls their story 'fake news.' By explaining how they gathered their information and pieced the story together, it will show that the story is full of facts that were responsibly researched.

Before social media, it was expected that a journalist would not share how a story was researched with the public. But today, there are media organizations that are saying in their ethics handbooks how a story was out together. In NPR's social media ethics handbook, it is mentioned how journalists should be open about their processes for reporting and editing with social media.

The threat of losing credibility due to social media has forced journalists to be open about how they put their stories together. Even if the journalist does not want to share their process, several major media organizations want them to show the readers the process in writing and reporting on a story. If it weren't for the growth of social media, journalists would not be held as accountable for their stories as they are now.