On Nov. 4, Anderson Cooper did the country a favor. He expertly deconstructed on his CNN show the bogus rumor that President Obama’s trip to Asia would cost $200 million a day. This was an important “story.” It underscored just how far ahead of his time Mark Twain was when he said a century before the Internet, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” But it also showed that there is an antidote to malicious journalism — and that’s good journalism.
In case you missed it, a story circulated around the Web on the eve of President Obama’s trip that it would cost U.S. taxpayers $200 million a day — about $2 billion for the entire trip...
The next night, Cooper explained that he felt compelled to trace that story back to its source, since someone had used his show to circulate it. His research, he said, found that it had originated from a quote by “an alleged Indian provincial official,” from the Indian state of Maharashtra, “reported by India’s Press Trust, their equivalent of our A.P. or Reuters. I say ‘alleged,’ provincial official,” Cooper added, “because we have no idea who this person is, no name was given.”
It is hard to get any more flimsy than a senior unnamed Indian official from Maharashtra talking about the cost of an Asian trip by the American president.Yikes. As the son of a print journalist, I'm both privy and sensitive to the rapid deterioration in journalistic standards within the mainstream media. The instant news cycle that the internet made possible sparked an incredible arms race among media outlets of all types (traditional and new media), with an emphasis on getting the story up first, right or wrong. Essentially, get the scoop, and worry about verification later. If necessary, run a retraction the next day in a well-hidden spot.
Clearly, irresponsible journalism is nothing new (nor is journalistic ineptitude, irresponsible journalism's mentally challenged half-brother). But its apparently rapid growth reveals the dark side of the internet and its power to disseminate information. It's indisputable that the internet has made more information available to more people; it's the quality of that information that remains in doubt. Now, more than ever, it's become incredibly simple to put out flawed or simply wrong information, while hiding behind a voice of authority.
This dynamic has become much more obvious to me since I began writing this blog. I often approach posts on this site with a pre-determined view on things, and I've found that it's never difficult to find confirming evidence to back up my beliefs--in the internet age, it's often simply a matter of how low you're willing to stoop with regard to your "sources". I like to think of myself as a responsible blogger/"journalist", one who doesn't succumb to the temptation of compromising integrity for the sake of bolstering my point of view. But not all bloggers or journalists share my approach, and it only takes one to create a runaway story.
Just one well-placed blog post or website can lead to an avalanche within the mainstream media; traditional media outlets are incredibly sensitive to being "beaten" to a breaking story by an internet site, and they will often pick up anything that seems to have even a shred of credibility. Again, publish now, verify later. But sometimes, by the time that verification step comes along, the story has already grown a life of its own--often having been perverted along the way in a strange game of media "telephone".
The onus, unfortunately, is on us in the general public to verify stories from the mainstream media on our own, until they prove again that they are worthy of our trust. Some outlets are bigger offenders than others (you know who you are), but almost all are suspect as long as they are engaging in an arms race with the internet. Keep your eyes and ears open.
[New York Times]
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