Internet perils

RELYING for information on Twitter, Facebook, other social media networks, blogs, or the Internet in general can be perilous for journalists, and therefore, for the public they’re supposed to serve. The information can turn out to be biased, incomplete, distorted, or totally false.

One of the reasons for that pronounced possibility is the absence of gate-keeping and gate- keepers in most Internet sites except those maintained by the TV networks and broadsheets.

While that’s been hailed as one of the new media’s liberating characteristics, the downside of it is that anyone regardless of experience, knowledge or bias can upload a blog post, or post a comment on Twitter and Facebook and other interactive sites without verifying the “facts” they’re revealing, or on which they base their opinions. There’s also a lot of name-calling and abuse in some blogs and social media sites.

Being the first to present one’s version of events makes that version seem true even if it’s actually false, incomplete or distorted. So compelling has the new media’s immediacy been that the new media have also become, in some instances, the virtual decision-makers for the old media in what they should report and what they shouldn’t.

In 2010, for example, one of the major TV networks was pushed by online reports into airing that an Ateneo de Manila psychologist had found then candidate Benigno Aquino III to be suffering from psychiatric problems. Apparently driven by the fear that it would be scooped by its competitors, the network aired an incomplete account to which a denial by the supposed author of the report was appended only later, and at the end of the account.

The year before, an account in a blog by one of those involved in an alleged mauling incident in a golf club led to reports in print and broadcast which blamed a government official, who happened to be Muslim, for supposedly throwing his weight around and resorting to violence. That assumption turned out to be false, but because based on the common bias against government officials and Muslims, was readily accepted by other bloggers and even some journalists.

Among the latter was then New York Times and International Herald Tribune correspondent and blogger Carlos Conde who condemned the official involved for acting like a warlord. Conde later admitted (“Blogging and Journalism: A Clash of Values?,”  PJR Reports, January-February 2009, p. 28) that what he had posted was incomplete, and that he had relied on the blog of one of the protagonists rather than on multiple sources.

Conde affirmed the right of that blogger to beat everyone else to the draw, as it were, by being the first to put her version of the incident online. As a journalist, however, Conde said, he “should have known better” than to “swat first and ask questions later.” To illustrate that point, Conde noted his own failings: “Did I attempt to get the side (of the official concerned)? I did not. Did I investigate whether what (the blogger wrote) was accurate or truthful? I did not. My outrage had been vented, so why bother? It was so… easy.” Conde said he was not blaming blogging per se, but he did claim that “because of its nature, blogging is such that it is very easy to be lazy, irresponsible and careless with it.”

Pretty much the same can be said about Twitter and Facebook. The upside of social media is their empowering capacity. Individuals who would otherwise not have any means to air their views have them at hand, whether as immediately available weapons to attack others, or as a means of disseminating information they may have, even it’s incomplete, biased, or even false. The upside of Twitter and Facebook is also their downside.

Now comes Washington Post reporter Chris Cilliza, who said in an April 19 post over the Post’s blog (“What the Boston bombings taught me about journalism”) that “ the reality of a news environment driven by Twitter, cable television and constantly updating news on the web is that the desire to be first has become all-encompassing.” The result, said Cilliza, is that reports based on unreliable sources are sometimes published.

The sources Cilliza was referring to are people on Twitter who were tweeting away as the Boston crisis erupted and continued to develop. Twitter, said Cilliza, can be a good thing, and declares that he’s relied for information on Twitter in the past and quite often.

“Twitter helped me understand where the bombs had gone off, sent me to reporters on the ground in Watertown Thursday night and provided images of an empty Boston and the SWAT teams searching for the suspects.”

But “the immediacy of Twitter means that one moment of bad judgment by someone with lots of followers (or even someone without lots of followers) can distort coverage for minutes or hours.”
Cilliza declares that “ it’s important to identify the people who really are authoritative sources and give them priority.

“So, what the FBI and the Boston police department say (or don’t) matters more than what some random person on Twitter–even one affiliated with a news organization–says or what an anonymous source might tell a reporter on TV. (To be clear, I regularly rely on anonymous sources for blog posts and stories but on stories of this magnitude — and with such MAJOR national implications — they should be used sparingly.)”

The pitfalls of relying on Twitter include not only information that may turn out to be false, incomplete or biased. A lot of people on Twitter were also confusing Chechen with the Czech Republic, and as a result condemning Czechs and even demanding that the US bomb the Czech Republic.

But what’s odd about what Cilliza has found out about relying on Twitter is how late he’s discovered them. There’s also the suggestion in his post that one can rely on Twitter and anonymous sources for information when a story has no “MAJOR national implications”. It suggests that a journalist can risk the integrity of his report when it comes to minor stories, and should be more careful with what sources he cites only when they’re major.

Twitter, Facebook and blogs have been around for sometime, and while, as Cilliza declares, journalists are still finding out the new media’s implications on journalism practice, that time should be enough for journalists to have learned that when it comes to journalism, the same rules about sourcing that have been around for sometime still apply: choose your sources carefully, double check what they say, verify their claims from documents and other sources, and never rely on anonymous sources.