By Arianna Guerra
ag598417@ohio.edu
The days of reading the entire morning newspaper with a cup of coffee or even watching the evening news are over for many. Within the last 10 years, it seems social media has come in and stole the show. The shift to online media as the main news source was quick, and left news outlets scrambling to learn more about social media strategy and fast news. "With more than 2.4 billion internet users, nearly 64.5 percent of them knew about a breaking news alert through social media as opposed to traditional media" according to AOK Marketing.
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| Picture source: Pew Research Center |
With the overwhelming demand for convenient news, the media industry is constantly changing and updating the way they share news. This has led to many great developments in the way outlets tell stories but it has also negatively impacted the accuracy of the stories.
Breaking news on social media can spread like fire, and most news outlets are striving to be the first to light the flame. Being the first news organization to announce breaking news is becoming increasingly valued over being the most accurate source of information.
There are many examples of this and it is quickly becoming the new normal.
The 2013 Boston Bombing left people around the country on the edge of their seats waiting for information about the status of the investigation. Media organizations were obviously eager to report that information as quickly as they could, this led to an ethical disaster.
As the police were searching for the bombers Reddit, a social news and discussion website, had growing theories about potential suspects. The Reddit community quickly decided on two suspects behind the bombing. These two suspects were listed by their full name and some Reddit users included these theories in tweets. Once these tweets gained traction they caught the attention of many professional journalists who then retweeted the suspect's names.
Although the majority of the retweets came from employees of well-known news organizations and not the actual organization itself, the general public considered this information factual. This showed that a professional journalist's retweet is seen as their approval stamp on the information.
This would have been a breakthrough for social media reporting if the information had been accurate. However, according to The Atlantic the next morning NBC's Pete Williams debunked this rumor as he revealed the real identity of the bombers.
Within a night a rumor that was proven to be false traveled like wildfire and was believed to be true because it had the support of professional journalists. There are a growing number of instances of how fast journalism can turn into an ethical nightmare.
Former Forbes contributor Nicole Martin writes about this dilemma in her article How Social Media Has Changed How We Consume News. "With social media as our new news managers, it is up to us to be the new fact checkers for media" Martin wrote. She comes to this conclusion after considering the growing popularity of sources like Buzzfeed, an organization that specializes in fast news, and Twitter, a social media platform.
Buzzfeed has defied the traditional rules of journalism to share news in a way that demands the attention of their audience, according to Who cares if it's true? an article published by Columbus Journalism Review. Instead of making corrections to stories that have been published, Buzzfeed has opted to instead hire copy editors to ensure their work will be as accurate as possible. If that work turns out to be inaccurate it will be the reader's job to think critically and do their research, just as Martin described in her article.
This new method of reporting the news has caused great debate between those who value traditional media and those who are pushing to change those traditions. The only thing that remains certain is that the world of journalism will continue to change and journalists will have to determine what changes they are willing to make to reach their audience.
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