Consider The Source

Helen Vollmer, President, Southwest

Over the holidays, I was visiting with my sister, a retired newspaper journalist (aren’t they all these days?), and we were talking about the ongoing demise of journalism. The conversation was not so much about fewer readers or outlets.  It was about the quality of journalism today: the lack of impartiality, the dearth of fact checking and the all-too-frequent proofing and editing misses.

Yeah, yeah . . . I know about real-time news, but shouldn’t we consider at what cost? It’s bad enough that we declare our President before the polls close, but the rampant misreporting that was occurring as the Newtown tragedy unfolded was just wrong.  No other word for it.  The race to get content out quickly ethically challenges even the best reporters and results in countermanding why news journalism exists in the first place:  to accurately and objectively communicate information to the public.

Over and over again this year, we’ve seen journalism gone amuck from reputable media outlets:  from misreporting on the Trayvon Martin case from the New York Times, ABC and others, to wrongly misinterpreting the Supreme Court’s Affordable Care Act decision by CNN and Fox News.  And, of course, the news gets amplified by all of us in our own posts and tweets.

Case in point: the horrible prank by two Australian radio personalities seeking details on the Duchess of Cambridge’s hospital not only invaded privacy, but may have contributed to the suicide of the nurse who took the call.  According to CNN Tech, the hashtag #royalprank was retweeted more than 15,000 times on Twitter after the radio station began promoting the call, and the retweeting continued after news of the nurse’s death.

As true journalism spirals out of control and more of us get our information from a variety of sources, we must look to ourselves to consider the source of news we get and what we believe to be true.  In 2013, as you hear and view breaking stories, try to remember the code of ethics that those of us who went to journalism school were taught at the beginning of our careers.

Ask yourself to carefully consider the source in terms of truthfulness, fairness, objectivity and public accountability. Are both sides represented in the reporting?  And then, as you retweet or post what you believe to be true, understand that you now are a reporter, too, and have a role in communicating accurately and responsibly.