The New Media: Tweeting Away Conscience and Accuracy
By Jon L. Mills
R emember when there were editors and reporters with credibility and conscience? Walter Cronkite was the most trusted man in America. There were editors and reporters who sat together and said, “There is not enough support to make that statement” or “that fact is too intrusive and not important to the public.”
Today, anyone can be a journalist, thanks to technology. The careless or the crazy have the same access to a worldwide audience on the Internet as a serious reporter does. There are still many excellent journalists and publications trying to maintain standards. But bloggers and tweeters have emerged as the new media, and many of them seem to believe that accuracy and conscience are old-fashioned.
I was first exposed to this new world of journalism a few years ago when I represented the Earnhardt family to keep autopsy photos of Dale Earnhardt from being published. Many in the press wanted access to autopsy photos – most with a motive to determine the cause of death.
Yet there were some Websites that focused on obtaining photos for Internet display. Have no doubt that they would have posted the photos online, because that is what they do. “Celebrity-autopsies.com” and “reporters” at other sites are in the business of using public records and privacy intrusions to make money.
The world had changed drastically since I represented the parents of the victims of the monstrous serial killer Danny Rolling to keep autopsy photos private. In 1991, there were no autopsy Websites. In 1991, those in the mainstream press said they would not publish the victims’ photos, and I believed them. Even then however, there was the fringe press that would have. Wisely, the judge in that case restricted publication of photos of these victims.
You don’t have to be a famous NASCAR driver like Dale Earnhardt for the new press to intrude. You can be an innocent victim or the family of an innocent victim. Today, if obtained, photos of the horrific crime scenes of the Danny Rolling victims would be on the Internet.
Both cases illustrate the clash of public records policy and privacy policy. Florida is unique because it protects each of these rights in our constitution. But in this new media age, such clashes may become even more frequent.
Speed Is Everything
Just as some in the new media have lost focus on conscience, they also have lost focus on accuracy. In the world of tweeting and blogging, speed is everything.
Granted, some Internet media are of great substance. There are award-winning bloggers. Voices of freedom in Cuba, China and Iran inspire the world via text, Twitter and blogs.
But there are also blogs that defame, intrude and publish inaccurate and incomplete information. How would you feel if an anonymous blogger wrote that you were unfit for your job and that you lied on your resume to get it?
Consider the Krinsky case, decided in California in 2008, about libel on Internet message boards. A court determined that it was not libel to say someone was a crook and falsified her medical degree because the site on which the statement was posted fostered hyperbole and venting. The court noted that the forum made the communications more like gossip than “accurate reporting,” and that a reasonable reader should not take it seriously.
Simply because readers “should not” take it seriously doesn’t mean they won’t.
Inaccuracy cuts across all areas of reporting, from politics to sports. ESPN’s Tim Keown wrote this about new media, credibility and accountability:
“The 24-hour news cycle created a rush to be first, not best. And now the rush to expand on the 24-hour news cycle by introducing the immediacy and superficiality of something as limited as Twitter has taken it a step beyond the rush. News is threatening to become as credible as the local crank who sits at home and writes letters to the editor about the pothole on the street in front of his favorite bar.”
Keown continued: “But from a journalistic sense, it seems like Twitter — and whatever technology comes next — is becoming a place that you can be wrong without consequences. The trend is troubling.”
We need new approaches that use the advantages of modern technology but preserve the values of the best journalists.
There is a desperate need for credible, civil media – especially in the electronic media. That is why the advent of FloridaThinks.com is so important. In this new era, a publication that takes advantage of the access, speed and distribution capabilities of the new media and preserves a commitment to civility, accuracy and conscience is welcome and needed.
Jon L. Mills wrote “Privacy: The Lost Right,” published by Oxford University Press. He is a law professor, the former Dean of the University of Florida Levin College of Law and former Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives.
This brings to mind a well known blog, often quoted and represented on major national news networks. Several years back, many of their informed, (translation, nasty), comments were put into question after the airing of the fact finding, Emmy nominated, HBO special, “Hacking Democracy”. (Where controversy stirs -– so goes Florida.) It’s truly sad to think that we’re headed down the path of journalism no longer being considered an honorable profession but rather just a hobby for the indignant.