The Twitter Trap
Howard Kurtz 2/22/12
Media Critic Howard Kurtz discusses how journalists incorporate Twitter into their reporting and when do you give away too much of the story before official publication. And who is actually breaking news nowadays? Mediaite recently noted that a young woman had tweeted the following: “@ShankarSharanya: Driver in front of my cab, STOPPED & fired 5 gun shots at the White House." Journalists picked up the story, even as D.C. police insisted this was a mere dispute between two cars, and it turned out there was a bullethole in the executive mansion.
“So who broke the story? Sharanya? The reporters who retweeted her? No one?” asks Mediaite. In other words, is news the raw observation, or the discovery and refining of the raw observation?
Contrast that with Craig Silverman's Poynter article: False Paterno death reports highlight journalists’ hunger for glory.
In the rush to be first are journalists serving the public? Or just trying to have bragging rights among other journalists? “If you’re right and first, no one remembers. If you’re first and wrong, everyone remembers.”
“Nobody’s going to scroll through a zillion time stamps to say, Oh, this guy had it three minutes earlier!” tweeted Esquire and Grantland writer Chris Jones. “Readers remember the best story, not the first story.”
I feel like this is a tricky statement. On one hand it is important that you are quick to publish a story. Nowadays when a story breaks, people know about it in a matter of seconds.
ReplyDeleteI knew of Whitney Houston's death within minutes, not because I was looking at a news website, but because the news of her death blew up the newsfeed of my facebook. If you then google the information and go to a preferred website and they don't have the information up yet, you'll go to a different website - and I feel like as a journalist you'll try to prevent that. With a big story like this, you don't want to stay behind as a news organization.
You do, however, have to be careful with those things. Retweeting an unverified statement could turn out really badly, so it's important that you at least acknowledge that something is only a rumor and unverified.
I think that twitter should be treated in the same way that a reporter will treat a source. You have to be skeptical about what someone tweets, and you have to double checks the facts before going with it. Even if a breaking news tweet comes from a "reputable" news outlet, a journalist needs to independently verify the breaking news at hand before publishing it in any other news outlet. Another alternative is to always credit your the tweets to the person/entity putting it out there. For example, "The Associated Press is reporting.."
ReplyDeleteI think that the instantaneous nature of Twitter has posed a unique dilemma.In many cases regular citizens have access to breaking news before news media outlets do. In these cases I would argue that it is indeed these "citizen journalists" who break the story rather than traditional reporters or police. In other cases though, a regular citizen may use so called "breaking news" on Twitter to attract attention and gain followers. In either case I think it is important for the news media to do their own reporting and even if they use a tweet as a tip for a story, they should always conduct their own follow up. I think the pressure to be timely and to "break" the story has caused some news organizations to act in an irresponsible and rushed manner that can end up hurting their reputation more than taking their time to accurately report a story would have in the long run.
ReplyDeleteOne pet peeve of mine is when my friends on Twitter write "Breaking News" on something they clearly took from AP or CNN or whoever broke the story, and make it sound like they did. Tweets often spread quickly, and people rarely use the proper attribution when citing where they obtained their information, so this creates exactly the same problem we saw with the Paterno issue. Every news outlet is always in a race to be first, and Twitter's rapidness makes it an easy target to look for information. Journalists should always go about the same reporting they normally would, and always check with a direct source.
ReplyDeleteI think Twitter takes a lot of the thrill out of writing on deadline. It is such a cool feeling to be the first person to put something out there in print. When your story is getting scooped on twitter hours before your publication goes to press, it feels like your story is being taken out from underneath you before you even get a chance. At Capital News Service this semester, one of the reporters did a great job covering the same-sex marriage debate in Maryland. He wrote a great story when the bill finally passed in both chambers, but his story hardly got picked up anywhere even though he got his story out an hour before the Washington Post. I think the news felt less urgent because it was already so widely distributed on the internet via social media before journalists even got a chance to put out a comprehensive story.
ReplyDeleteThere are many advantages and many disadvantages to the idea of Twitter, which is clearly highlighted by these two contrasting situations. One being that in today's society anyone can whip out their phones and instantaneously be a journalist. The advantage of this is that in a situation when an actual journalist is not there at the exact moment a story breaks or something incredible happens, it will most likely be captured by a bystander. However, this also gives any Joe Schmo on the street the power to report when they have not learned about what's ethical or unethical in the world of journalism. But in all honesty, the second story about falsely reporting Joe Paterno's death is why I cannot stand Twitter. There has always been an aspect of competition in journalism even before Twitter to be the first to report a story, but Twitter has taken this competition to a whole new level. The idea of being first has become more important than being right, and when you're wrong, many are quick to point fingers at others instead of taking full responsibility.
ReplyDeleteI think people who blame Twitter for a lack of professionalism in journalism are taking the easy way out in trying to find a solution to a non-existent problem. Has Twitter been the main cause for journalists rushing to get a story out first rather than worrying about the facts? It probably hasn't helped, but there have been cases of erroneous reporting for decades. I think if anything Twitter and other forms of social media have given journalists the opportunity to reach a larger audience. Your target audience doesn't have to subscribe to a magazine or newspaper for a writer, or live in the same media market if you're a television or radio reporter. You can spread your brand name all over the world.
ReplyDeleteJournalism has always stressed the importance of beating the competition to the presses. It's not Twitter's fault for allowing everyday citizens to "report" the news. At the end of the day, I completely agree with the sentiment that quality will trump time of publication. And reporters can utilize Twitter to give snippets of information at a time. However, just as a tweet only lasts for around 10-30 seconds on someone's feed, a reporter doesn't lose anything. Their final article will still be way more compelling than trying to scroll through a bunch of tweets.
Twitter is opening a can of worms, especially in the news world. Someone can see something happen, tweet it and suddenly it lives on the web (unless it's deleted). This causes people to rush to getting news out there so they can be first. The danger of that is that you may not have all the facts straight in your rush to get that first tweet out there and now you've just spread false information
ReplyDeleteTwitter has even allowed people to by-pass traditional media. This week, Tiger Woods, rather than go to a press conference, is going to answer questions from fans submitted via Twitter and Facebook. (http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Issues/2012/04/30/Media/Tiger.aspx)
If the media continues to jump on stories and misreport information, they may become outdated and people will begin to work around the media, since they won't be needed. Twitter can be a great tool for journalists, as long as the primary use of the tool isn't to be the first station to break news, because that's when you're gonna slip up.