Journalistic Integrity in the Digital Age?

MrMann asks: "Should online news agencies like Slashdot be held accountable for tabloid news stories much like paper mediums are? I know the arguments of 'Slashdot is Rob's baby and he does it for fun' that has popped up, but since Andover bought Slashdot, it has stopped being Rob's pet project and has become in the very real sense, a business entity. Since it is no longer a private endeavor (VA Linux is a publicly traded company) shouldn't Slashdot be held to the same standards as other 'news' agencies?" I've always considered Slashdot to be more of a discussion site than a news site, but the news portion is important. I'll be the first to admit that we aren't perfect when it comes to that part, but we do the best we can when it comes to corrections. Just out of curiosity, how do you all feel about how the real online news sites handle their reporting?

Comments

Re:Which ethics of old media would those be?

[nharmon]

Jon, I don't know what newspapers you subscribe to, but perhaps you should find out who the local employee-owned papers are and read a few of them.

But to be perfectly honest, yourself, and Slashdot as a whole are not perfect. In fact, I would say /. is far from it. You yourself overstate things a tad too much. It's less often we see real news, instead seeing the sorry excuses for editorial content on this site.

If I had it my way, when news was posted in order to inject a topic of discussion, it would be kept to "simply the facts". If the poster wanted to put in an opinion, he can put it in as a comment, and see how it's moderated.

Mr. Katz, you've always been against the mass stereotyping of geeks, such that I find it rude that you would do the same to real news outlets

/. = News AND Opinion

[sulli]

My view is that Slashdot, and many other sites like it, are a mixture of news and opinion that have their own distinctive viewpoint. It's very important to be accurate and check facts, but it's not necessary to try too hard to be "objective," like a daily newspaper might. /. and friends are much more like the tabloids, or the free weeklies, that have a distinct point of view and still are respected as being accurate and useful.

Comments are owned by the poster, so the posters then collectively share responsibility, through answers and moderation, for making sure that meaningful viewpoints are aired and responded to. This works exceedingly well at Slashdot, not so well in other online forums.

Several points

[OlympicSponsor]

1) You are exactly right. The argument "It's Rob's baby, he can do what he want" is (no longer) no more valid than "It's Rupert Murdoch's baby, he can do what he want".

2) Slashdot SHOULD be held to the standards of other news orgs. For those cynically saying "what standards?" I agree that some orgs do a better job than others. However, ALL orgs print retractions and corrections (something /. rarely does, unless their noses are rubbed in it, despite what Cliff says). Furthermore, some orgs are very good at being objective and accurate. For instance, NPR.

3) Specifically what improvements could Slashdot make?

a) Have someone (else) read your post before you submit it. For that matter, create a Kuro5hin-style "posting queue" but accessible only to /. editors. Hemos puts an article in there, but it only reaches the front page if someone else signs off on it. In order to sign off on a posting, force a spellcheck and an archive search. If there was a way to force a fact check, I'd mention that as well.

b) From snippets picked up here and there (including the fact that this story was posted on the front page), I can tell some of the /. editors are getting kind of tired of the shoddier aspects of Slashdot. Listen to their ideas

c) Take a journalism class.

d) But the biggest thing that Taco/Hemos could do to improve the site is: Get involved. You two used to spend a lot of "quality time" with the site--posting comments, responding to questions, etc. You used to listen to us, use our ideas or tell us why we were dumb. But the last 2-3 years you've been sticking us in virtual daycare and rarely if ever talking to us. No wonder a lot of us are turning out to be Anonymous Delinquents.
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