One of the afternoon sessions at the New Journalism, New Ethics? conference at UW Madison was called What Ever Happened to Verification in Journalism?
This was a wide-ranging discussion so this entry only captures snapshots of the debate.
Speaking first, Kristin Czubkowski, blogger, Laptop City Hall , and government reporter, The Capital Times, questioned whether verification had gone away.
But at the same time, she cited an example when she retweeted some breaking news, and only afterwards thought that, maybe, she should have checked it out.
Scott Cohn, senior correspondent, CNBC, added that the need to push content increases the potential for inaccuracies.
Cohn insisted “tweets are not journalism,” arguing that journalism is reporting of the facts based on an editorial process.
(I have written about Twitter as ambient journalism. I would argue that Cohn’s approach ignores how this editorial process can take place in a distributed and collaborative manner on social media, outside of the formal structures of journalism.
It also fails to recognise that Twitter is a platform, and as such, can be journalism or not. Journalism is not about the medium but about the content.)
Sue Robinson, journalism professor, UW School of Journalism and Mass Communication, said her study on audience perception found that many people think tweets from a journalist are journalism.
Robinson also made the point that we need to consider audience expectations and whether they view news stories as differently from tweets.
She said that the audience has an ethical obligation to understand the different forms of media, point to Dan Gillmor’s Mediactive project.
Phil Rosenthal, media columnist, Chicago Tribune, joined the discussion by saying that a tweet can be news if it is properly vetted.
He pointed out that the internet provides a channel for instant feedback if you make a mistake. “The audience will always hold you accountable,” he said.
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