In 1997 Professor Jim Carey of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism traced the history of American journalism: “For most of the 300 year history of journalism in North America [journalism] has been primarily an activity of polemics and ideology...Journalism was subsidized by political parties, and journalists who felt themselves to be fully respectable and responsible spoke for the interests and the outlooks and the values of such parties. That started to change late in the 19th Century...for a very good reason...The principal political issue of the late 19th Century was the suffrage of black Americans...Republicans needed such votes; Democrats didn't want them. Journalists started to break loose...to declare themselves the journalistic equivalent of independent voters...Free of partisan commitments. With outlooks and understandings that were aimed more at a common interest or a public interest”(Committee of Concerned Journalists).
Americans have come to believe that their sources of news always report the facts of a story impartially, without any underlying biases that would affect what or how something was being reported. Particularly in wartime, Americans have grown dependent on the unbiased reporting of news as being essential to the well-being of our democratic republic, as the purpose of the news reporting is to provide a complete basis for individual political decision making.
But--in today’s cyber-reporting world where anyone with a word processor and an internet connection can report, or blog, their way to prominence without any filtering or vetting by editors or fact checkers, in real-time to boot—are these standards of fairness, impartiality and completeness still honored and practiced?
Introduction: War in Cyberspace tries to answer this question. The answer is not pretty, and neither are the implications it brings.
This abstract of a study on this subject compares the increased importance of digital news reporting and dissemination via the internet that became apparent during the 2003 Iraq War compared to the 1991 Iraq war. The evolution of news gathering and distribution in the 12 year interval was profound as the internet and digital technology (each distinct and yet inexorably intertwined) played a major role in how news was gathered, prepared and presented to its consumers, who then used it to form opinions and communicate thoughts and ideas based on the news with others.
The study points out several fundamental differences and concerns when comparing traditional news product with cyber news product. One is the observation that in the cyber news world a news consumer can no longer believe what they see. The ubiquitousness of inexpensive photo editing software, and the ease of sophisticated video image editing and manipulation, means that it is impossible for an end user to determine the authenticity of an image. In addition, there are reports that some cyber news providers deliberately mismatch photos with captions to serve one agenda or another, and also sometimes use photos obtained unethically in order to deceive.
Another change that cyber news brings is in the shear number of news outlets available for consumers to read. Some people have observed that the massive choices now available provides news consumers as much of a problem on one extreme—that is, too much information to digest—as the utter lack of information does on the other extreme. One way consumers deal with this problem is through the selective filtering (or “selective perception”) of news providers in favor of sources that support and reinforce an individual’s existing preconceptions, biases, ideologies and core beliefs. Information that does not match an individual’s pre-existing beliefs is dubbed “cognitive dissonance.” These concepts of selective perception and cognitive dissonance were used to explain how Americans reacted to the 2003 Iraq war. People who favored the war at the beginning tended to continue to favor the war, while those who opposed the war from the start also maintained their opposition. Neither side was apparently open to the ideas of the other-even intellectually. More recently, the 2005 flap over the Danish political cartoon that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad was electronically redistributed by countless Muslim groups as a way to perpetuate and increase the outrage within the Muslim global community.
The study identifies six characteristics of Cyber or “New” media in times of war. All fundamentally change the way in which people receive news, what it contains, and how people react to the news they receive. The characteristics are convergence, ubiquity, agenda setting, credibility, interactivity, and transferability.
Convergence refers to the blending within one web site of news offerings that formerly would have been distributed in distinct ways by distinct organizations. A modern web site contains text articles, photo spreads, video reports, podcasts, and opinion that formerly would have been the province of newspapers, magazines, TV networks, radio networks, and op-ed pages, respectively. Ubiquity refers simply to the reality that the internet makes the information available to a virtually unlimited number of people at any time.
Traditional media saw themselves as being providers of information that the new consumer would use in order to form an opinion. Today, through agenda setting, cyber media actively try to influence how their users think about an issue or issues. This carries an even greater influence when one considers how much attention mainstream media pays now to the new media. Additionally, the concept of credibility has morphed in its accepted definition. Many new media have achieved an instant credibility even though they lack professional or academic credentials. Prior journalistic standards such as accuracy, fairness, lack of bias, completeness, depth and trustworthiness have lost their cachet in the new firmament.
Interactivity--the ability of new media to utilize the immediacy and two-way communication inherent in digital communication is another new distinguishing feature. New media have the space and resources to present virtually unlimited communication from users, instead of traditional media’s need to limit the space and content of user communication for logistical and budgetary reasons. Transferability is another characteristic of new media that was brought about through digital communication. The ability to “cut and paste” information with ease means that much information--no matter if it is fact, rumor or opinion—can be instantly captured, and used as is, or modified for one reason or another with no accountability as to the origin of the information.
This is all very interesting from an intellectual perspective. But, it is very alarming from a societal viewpoint.
The purpose of news is for ordinary citizens to gain the information they need in order to lead their lives. Nowhere in American life is this information more important than in our political and governmental affairs. In our participatory republic, it is absolutely vital for citizens to have continual access to unbiased impartial information with which to make judgments about national affairs of all sorts--including the waging of war. Yet, it seems that the trend is moving away from impartial information in favor of partisan information. This is worrisome because partisan news can lead to the manipulation of news in favor of the personal gain of some group or person over others. Carried further, this can lead to a short-circuiting of our established procedures of participatory governing, which can undermine our entire constitutional republic.
A free press is fundamentally vital to our well being. A free press is not just one that is allowed to report as it sees fit, but actually does so, without partisan influence on the part of its proprietors. History shows that we did not reach our pinnacle as a nation until the press freed itself in the 19th century. The concern now is that we are trending away from a free press and towards a press with an agenda.
That can keep me up at nights.
References:
Committee of Concerned Journalists. Can Journalism Be Impartial? Session 1: Can Interpretive Journalism Still Be Impartial? Transcript of a meeting held at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York, NY on December 4, 1997. Downloaded on February 17, 2008 from http://concernedjournalists.org/can-journalism-be-impartial-session-1-can-interpretive-journalism-still-be-impartial.
Berenger, R. D. (2006). Introduction: War in cyberspace. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(1), article 9. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue1/berenger.html
3 comments:
The Blog “is change always good?” demonstrates how rapidly traditional news print agencies are embracing the Internet to create subscriptions. In this 24 hours, 365 day per year news cycle, more coverage is available to the subscribers. News stories that would have “fallen through the cracks” as one may say, now become virtual front page news for an hour or so. In my opinion, the quality of this coverage suffers. Traditional news papers add “contributing” reporters to their staffs who may write numerous articles in a day in order to make the virtual deadline for posting. In many cases the facts are not complete or even erroneous. Is change always good? Not if it encourages erroneous information.
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I felt that the Blog “What goes around comes around” was a great Blog to build on my comments from “is change always good?”. The fact that “Americans have come to believe that their sources of news always report the facts of a story impartially, without any underlying biases that would affect what or how something was being reported” may be irrational because of the migration from print to the Internet. It would be financially impossible for me to distribute my findings on a subject via print media. But on the Internet, I could literally post my information for millions to see regardless of the accuracy or the political views that may be the foundation of my information. If I have a convincing story, it could literally take on a life of its own as it is forwarded and linked to by the readers. Years ago I emailed some photos of military operations to a couple of friends. They forwarded them to a few other friends, who did the same. My photos were forwarded to me two months ago from a friend in Florida, who was not part of the original email and did not know the first recipients. So, what goes around comes around, really does occur.
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