CHAPTER TWO: A REGULATED JOURNALIST A DAY KEEPS THE FAKE NEWS AWAY
Regulating the voices of journalists has been suggested to address the rising fake news trend that is tainting today’s media sphere. However, is this regulation just censoring the voices of some of the most valuable voices of today’s journalism? Ashlee Murphy of dae-zea tackles this pressing debate in a two part blog series.
“Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived,” states The Cluetrain Manifesto, a work of business literature compiled collaboratively by four American business analysts/journalists.
There is no dismissing the value of the internet. The buzzing realm of the world wide web comes with an inherent freedom of speech and opportunity for conversation. The internet is quickly evolving to be the world’s most immediate source of news. Right now 38% of Americans are keeping up online only and 72% of those are reading their news on mobile devices.
Since the rise of the internet, titles such as ‘the blogger’ have come to the professional journalism scene. And, despite the often lack of qualifications, 57% of the American population is more likely to send their money that way rather than mainstream media. This is majorly in hand to the readership-journo relationship that is present in the conversational nature of being online.
UK Managing Director of affiliate marketing network, affilinet, Helen Southgate, now poses the question to bloggers, “how (do) they go about building on this trust, maintain editorial integrity, and at the same time, monetise their site?”
Regulatory demands are being made in light of the fake news epidemic and as the web is the widest distributor of the ‘open, natural, uncontrived’ human voice, online journalists are in the spotlight of criticism.
Convergency reviews have previously disregarded bloggers, with the Finkelstein Review citing only those with 15 000+ hits online warrants regulation. With so many of the internet’s influential voices below that bracket, it is long overdue for Australia’s regulations toward media and communications to see a refresher. This is largely due to the traditional frameworks for regulation being aligned with broadcasting and telecommunications, which dominated the media sphere in the 1990s. Clearly, these frameworks are just no longer appropriate for new digital media.
The biggest loophole within this framework revolves around the pressing question of what is an online journalist to do in a profession that next to no-one wants to pay for? Well, the answers, as described by Crikey, are speed (with accuracy lagging behind), Churnalism and advertorials. This means real, quality news content is lost; drowning in a sea of poor quality, unoriginality and profit marketing. Crikey describes this as online journalists ‘essentially viewing readers as eyeballs to be sold to advertisers.’ Of course print and broadcast are equally as guilty, however the intangible conversational, casual nature of online media often means that viewers don’t really know that what they’re viewing may be inaccurate or sponsored. Such content is not within the monitoring of media guidelines.
Due to that very casual nature of online, and specifically social media, journalism, there is a ‘heard it through the grapevine’ narrative evident.
The photo of one victim, a 22 year old student named Sunil Tripathi, had been shared over Facebook by his friends and family after he’d been missing almost eight weeks. However, Twitter and Reddit escalated his search when users falsely accused Tripathi as one of the Boston Bombings suspects. Within twenty-four hours, the name and image of Tripathi was trending over both social media networks.
PHOTO: Twitter
Malinowski’s (who is notably the BuzzFeed Senior Sportswriter) post sparked further speculation over the innocence of Tripathi. The tweet was retweeted almost 140 times, and supported on other social media sites such as the Tumblr of largely infamous pop-culture blogger, Perez Hilton. His family subsequently endured a long night of phone calls, hundreds of threats and anti-Islamic messages (although they are not Muslim).
Tripathi was later found dead in the Providence River, ruling out any foul play and suspicion over his involvement with the Boston Bombings.
Social media was so very, very wrong and it is the flexibility, rapidity, spontaneity and economical value that makes it such a viable option to spread ‘alternative facts’, such as the misidentification of Tripathi, for journalists. This stands as the most potent support for the regulation of journalists worldwide.
A comparison between a media licence and the medical school graduate “MD” was deliberated in part one of this blog series. The health practitioner registration installs faith from patients, why shouldn’t a similar assessment process be attributed to journalists?
Doctors don’t deter their patients from seeking treatment from specialists or other medicinal sources; a regulated journalist wouldn’t be bigoted against readers extending their interest to other sources either. Therefore, an open media sphere with the freedom of speech that journalists hold so dearly wouldn’t be severed, but journos would still practice under ethical, universal regulation.
While regulation will be no quick-fix to the curing journalism of fake news, the newfound media trust that will be installed with new regulations across all journalistic forums will make fake news easier to distinguish.
Join the digital journalism conversation! Find part one of this online series that addresses the negatives of this debate here and share your views with #dae-zea.