Ask a Baby Boomer what he remembers about his childhood and generally you will hear a long rant about how life was slower “back in his day”, slower and easier. Now, this may sound like a cliché, but perhaps there is something there. Today everything is built for speed: drive thru restaurants, self-checkout lines, online news.
Young people today (myself included) are obsessed with doing things fast and knowing things first. This is especially true when it comes to the news. Though the type of news that is important to my generation may not resemble the interests of my grandparents, or parents for that matter, I want the information and I want it five minutes ago.
This need for speed is one reason that innovations such as RSS feeds and Twitter have become so popular in the
last few years. Subscribers of these technologies are able to have information streamed to them every minut
e of every day. The information is hand picked and send to mobile devices in a flash.
So what is the problem? If young people today are consuming news thats a good thing right? What could possibly be the harm?
The problem is while the information is disseminated faster, it is also becoming less reliable. The old standards of truth and accuracy have been pushed aside and replaced with speed and novelty.
It may not be a problem when the incorrect information is merely a piece of gossip such as when a blogger broke the story of Lady Gaga being a hermaphrodite and other news media followed suit, but what if the information was of dire consequence?
The news of Michael Jackson’s death broke on Twitter initially and spread through social networking sites like wildfire, so is it possible a serious (but false) story could also spread and cause widespread panic? I think it is.
With the emphasis now on fast reporting rather than accurate reporting, I think the audience of the Internet age will likely consume more media, but less truth. This is a crisis of the traditional journalism ethics and should be taken under consideration.
Truth, accuracy and fair reporting should be fundamental steps to any good journalism, with speed and flare just behind. Legitimate news media need to take a step back and realize that the public may want the story now, but they need the story straight.
Good points. I would actually make the argument, however, that we are less at risk for misinformation than previous generations. Though we're more likely to get the wrong information initially, we're also more likely to see the correction and to accept the correction as truth. Corrections come at us a lot more quickly and boldly than they would in the past, and they come at us from all sides.
ReplyDeleteI think the problem is that the responsibility ultimately rests on the reader to check the facts. While we have a lot of lies thrown at us, we have to realize that a lot of bloggers have their own agenda. So when we read something suspect, we need to check it against other sources. So while we're more prone to hearing lies in the beginning, we also have the capabilities to debunk those lies, which previous generations did not have.
Good post. The speedy spread of incorrect facts has occurred in many cases. One prominent case was the Sago Mine blast in 2006.
ReplyDeleteYes, speed kills. So what do we do about it?
I'm glad you included links. We'll work a bit on the grammar of linking, but that shouldn't be a difficult adjustment.
Good use of internal and external voice. Keep at it.
I liked a lot of things about this blog. It was easy to follow your train of thought and both structured and written well. Your voice came across in the post well. Having links and a picture helped add to the content and support your argument.
ReplyDeleteI also liked your point. I agree that the most significant casualties in today's fast reporting are truth and accuracy.
Good job, I enjoyed reading.