Goldblum back from the "dead": Real news sources trump blogs for accuracy
It’s a wired world and information moves fast.
The average person on the street with a smartphone has more access to up-to-the-minute information than the world’s best newsgathering agencies had only a decade ago.
Nowadays anybody with Internet access can set up a website, a blog or a Twitter or Facebook account and put information out into the world as fast as they can type.
But a lot of the information floating in cyberspace isn’t reliable. Actually, a fair chunk of it would never be allowed to see print in your average newspaper.
Working journalists have standards they adhere to, or they’re not journalists long. Bloggers, Tweeters and the nameless multitude who troll online forums don’t.
Reporters have to know the laws concerning the publication of information. They have to know that a ban on the publication of evidence from a judge is not a suggestion and breaching it could land them in the slammer for contempt of court.
They have to be aware that anytime they put pen to paper the risk of defaming someone is very much there and any wrong turn on that twisting road can lead to jail too.
Reporters have to know that posting election results before the polls close in a certain part of the country can land them in hot water as well.
Oh, there are traps and snares aplenty in the publication of information, and saying I didn’t know is no defense for a reporter, or a blogger either for that matter.
And while most reporters get their training from journalism schools or by doing the work again and again until it becomes second nature, the average blogger doesn’t have a clue about the pitfalls that await them.
And that’s where blogging gets dangerous. For them and for the public.
A blogger could unintentionally defame someone, breach a publication ban and illegally report election results all in a 12-word-long internet-spanning message and never have the faintest idea they were breaking the law. Not to mention all the downright inaccurate information they can send around the globe with the click of a button.
Look at poor Jeff Goldblum, the actor from the Fly films, Independence Day, and a whole bunch of Jurassic Park movies. The week before last some blogger reported Goldblum had fallen from a cliff to his death in New Zealand and within minutes the Tweeting and Facebooking world “knew” he was dead. This went on for several days until Goldblum made an appearance on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report last Monday to let the world know that he was still among the living.
The situation was kind of funny until you realize the amazing power for misinformation this technology can have in untrained hands.
Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture, told the Associated Press last week the coverage of the election protests in Iran on Twitter "exposes all the weakness of the service, the fact that it's so chaotic and unreliable.
“Who knows who's tweeting what?" Keen said.
Exactly. Who knows?
Read whatever you want on the Internet, that’s what it’s there for, but when you need information you can trust, read a real news source, not a blog from some fella living in his mom’s basement who gets his “news” from TMZ.
The average person on the street with a smartphone has more access to up-to-the-minute information than the world’s best newsgathering agencies had only a decade ago.
Nowadays anybody with Internet access can set up a website, a blog or a Twitter or Facebook account and put information out into the world as fast as they can type.
But a lot of the information floating in cyberspace isn’t reliable. Actually, a fair chunk of it would never be allowed to see print in your average newspaper.
Working journalists have standards they adhere to, or they’re not journalists long. Bloggers, Tweeters and the nameless multitude who troll online forums don’t.
Reporters have to know the laws concerning the publication of information. They have to know that a ban on the publication of evidence from a judge is not a suggestion and breaching it could land them in the slammer for contempt of court.
They have to be aware that anytime they put pen to paper the risk of defaming someone is very much there and any wrong turn on that twisting road can lead to jail too.
Reporters have to know that posting election results before the polls close in a certain part of the country can land them in hot water as well.
Oh, there are traps and snares aplenty in the publication of information, and saying I didn’t know is no defense for a reporter, or a blogger either for that matter.
And while most reporters get their training from journalism schools or by doing the work again and again until it becomes second nature, the average blogger doesn’t have a clue about the pitfalls that await them.
And that’s where blogging gets dangerous. For them and for the public.
A blogger could unintentionally defame someone, breach a publication ban and illegally report election results all in a 12-word-long internet-spanning message and never have the faintest idea they were breaking the law. Not to mention all the downright inaccurate information they can send around the globe with the click of a button.
Look at poor Jeff Goldblum, the actor from the Fly films, Independence Day, and a whole bunch of Jurassic Park movies. The week before last some blogger reported Goldblum had fallen from a cliff to his death in New Zealand and within minutes the Tweeting and Facebooking world “knew” he was dead. This went on for several days until Goldblum made an appearance on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report last Monday to let the world know that he was still among the living.
The situation was kind of funny until you realize the amazing power for misinformation this technology can have in untrained hands.
Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture, told the Associated Press last week the coverage of the election protests in Iran on Twitter "exposes all the weakness of the service, the fact that it's so chaotic and unreliable.
“Who knows who's tweeting what?" Keen said.
Exactly. Who knows?
Read whatever you want on the Internet, that’s what it’s there for, but when you need information you can trust, read a real news source, not a blog from some fella living in his mom’s basement who gets his “news” from TMZ.
posted by Street Wise Guy | 10:15 AM
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