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Wonkette and the Ethics of Online Journalism
Decaffeinated Jedi writes "The New York Times offers up a thought-provoking article ('First With the Scoop, if Not the Truth' - free reg. req.) on Ana Marie Cox, proprietor of the popular inside-the-beltway gossip blog Wonkette. Known for her site's 'gossipy, raunchy, potty-mouthed' coverage of Washington politics, site owner Nick Denton is quoted in the article as saying, 'I think it's implicit in the way that a Web site is produced that our standards of accuracy are lower. Besides, immediacy is more important than accuracy, and humor is more important than accuracy.' Needless to say, such a statement raises some interesting questions about the growing influence of blogs and other non-traditional online news sources. That being said, does the nature of the World Wide Web in fact give sites like Wonkette, Drudge, or even Slashdot a free pass on accuracy if it means the difference between getting the scoop or not?"
By chasing a chimera of of objectivity they can't meet -- and one the public would happily tell them matters more inside the newsroom than outside of it -- traditional newspapers have gotten further and further away from writing in a manner that readers can relate to.
This matters a lot because it's at the root of the "gotcha" journalism most local broadcasts engage in, it's one of the big factors behind the decline in newspaper readership and (most importantly), it's pissing away the trust that the U.S. model of press freedom spent 200-odd years building up.
The funny thing: Newspapers know this, but they're trapped by the by the same bundling mentality that's choking innovation in the telco market.
Disclaimer: I was a journalist for a bunch o' years and made these same observations then, too. Not a good way to make friends with the publisher's office.
The point: Most readers will trade off accuracy for someone who's openly in their philosophical or political corner. Another segment will trade off accuracy for immediacy. If you're both passionate and immediate, of course you're going to be a formidable thread to old-school media.
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
That being said, does the nature of the World Wide Web in fact give sites like Wonkette, Drudge, or even Slashdot a free pass on accuracy if it means the difference between getting the scoop or not?"
This really is a nonsensical spin on this story, and also the wrong question to be asking. Wonkette, Drudge, and even Slashdot can put whatever the heck they want to online. It is up to the reader to decide, based on multiple criteria, whether or not they believe/trust/put stock in the information's deliverer.
If you as reader use no criteria as filters, if you blindly believe any site, info, data, gossip, or especially scoop, you deserve what you get. That goes for both the online world and the offline.
That said, it's amusing how little humans change despite this new technology we're all enjoying. Gossip columnists and gossips in general have always been with us, have always been attractive to us, and no doubt will always be, even when we're beaming our thoughts at each other telepathically in our lifepods in orbit around the Sedna refuelling station.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
How is it a 'scoop' if the news/story/whatever is innacurate? I could scoop ALL the major news sources just by making up crap stories featuring the right players. I don't see any way to call this (or relate this) to journalism.
I always hit Drudge first thing when I log on in the morning. I don't necessarily trust everything he says or posts, but if something big happened, I know it will be there. Then I can check more reputable sites to see if there is any truth to it. So for me, sites like Drudge have a lot of value, even if they aren't always accurate.
Because they've never had a problem with journalistic ethics.
The two most interesting things about that godawful site are:
1) There's now a large enough of an incestuous core of "new media" types that well-connected individuals can instantly jump to prominence over far superior alternatives who don't know the old gang from Wired. Just like there's no getting rid of Andy Rooney, there will be no getting rid of the folks from Suck or Salon.
2) The nerdy guys who dominate the online world are absolute suckers for any woman who will talk about sex.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Hell no.
I disagree fundamentally with just about everything mentioned there. A website, if it is even pretending to be a "news site", absolutely must be accurate. You cannot simply roll dice to determine a story if you want to keep a consistent reader base. Being first means nothing if you are totally wrong.
As for humor trumping accuracy, this too is patently absurd. It's funny to laugh at George Bush mangling a quote in a headline, but what if (and believe me, it's a stretch for me to defend W. here) the President never said it?
Let's jump forward about five years. The President of the United States has just given a press conference. Some yutz with a long-range microphone and a web-enabled palm pilot sits about 500 yards away from the White House Lawn, watching the President get off the podium. Under his breath, Mr. President mutters, "God, I just bombed that Cuba issue."
The guy with the long mike hears "God, I just bombed [indistinct] Cuba [indistinct]." Twenty-four hours later, Miami is in ruins and nobody knows why, until they check out a web site that claims that the U.S. has nuked Havana.
Information mutates so rapidly on the Web, with everyone adding their own bias to the "facts" they receive. It's like the old 'telephone' game everybody used to play in kindergarten-- pass the message along and see how it changes four or five kids down the line.
Accuracy is important in any medium. With the web, however, it's evolved to a point where nobody can really believe anything unless a) the source is reputable or b) it comes from multiple sources. Publishing false or inaccurate information undermines a), and with b) there can be nobody who "breaks the news first".
I don't really consider the web to be a primary source of "real world" news-- sure, I read four or five gaming sites every day to keep up on the industry, but that's different from something like, say, global thermonuclear war. For something like that I will always turn to traditional media such as radio, print, or television. (I consider the web sites of the traditional news media to be a pseudo-extension of those publications; they still require verification from "outside" but are generally more trusted than the average web site.)
Bottom line: A blog is not and can never be an implicitly "trusted" news source. Not even my own. Especially not my own.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
I certainly can't understand why anyone would willingly get their information from an inaccruate source, and then use that information to either form opinions or attempt to advance their views.
You are assuming that the arguer values accurate information. In the fundamentalist vs. evolution debate the fundamentalists value their world view over accuracy.
SteveM
I used to poke by Yahoo news or CNN each day. I started to dislike the way CNN covered some things. Not liberal or conservative, but rather omissions of information reflecting both sides of the spectrum. Basically, poor writing.
So, I switched to Google News. Suddenly, what was "hot" was decided by the number of online sources writing about it. I started reading online periodicals I never hit before, like channelasia.com and reuters. Story accuracy and viewpoint was nicely indexed and facts could be cross-checked.
Now, I only use Google news. It creates the counterbalancing effect to sites that specialize in scoops and poor fact checking. If a story breaks, you immediately can read through 15 different viewpoints on it.
This is the power of the net, the pluralism of news sources. No single entity without indexing technology can achieve what Google has. With one swoop of the web spider, Google has acted as a counterbalance to large corporate media empires sucking up the number of radio and tv outlets. Fight so that it doesn't get regulated away.