ClackamasTownCtr.JPG
Whether in the nation's capital or close to home in the Portland area, news of a gunman shooting at innocent people puts intense pressure on journalists to report swiftly and accurately as events unfold. Above, a mother and daughter stopped by the Clackamas Town Center to pray the day after a suicidal 22-year-old man killed two people and himself on Dec. 11, 2012.
(Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian)
Update: This post has been revised to correct a reference to the Supreme Court ruling that CNN and Fox News initially got wrong.
On the same day that
as the shooter in the mass killings at the Washington Navy Yard, about 50 Oregon journalists gathered hours later to discuss "Ethics in the Age of Twitter."
Don't laugh.
As one of those 50, I certainly wasn't. And neither was anyone else.
The after-work discussion at the Oregon Public Broadcasting office in Portland featured a panel of three distinguished veterans now working as consultants and in academia and an audience heavily populated by today's young, mobile, multimedia journalists.
To be clear, this was no Old School vs. New School debate. Nor was it a mainstream vs. alternative media face-off. Rather, it was a free-flowing airing of issues that touched on the realities of today's news ecosystem, in which news organizations, freelancers, bloggers and ordinary citizens compete to be first with the news but all too often at the expense of accuracy and damaged reputations.
It's an evolving, morphing ecosystem driven by the marriage of technology and social media -- essentially "a speed arms race," as one speaker put it. And no one involved in the process of gathering and disseminating news can duck the implications, whether it's a New York Times staffer hired to verify the accuracy of tweets or a community news reporter at the
who's posting photos, videos and stories to the Leader's home page.
Reader feedback
Do you have thoughts about ethics in the age of Twitter? Share your opinions and questions in the comment box below.
Or share them directly with Leader Opinion Editor George Rede at his next
Fourth Friday
event, a meet-and-greet that happens on the fourth Friday of every month.
Rede will be at the
, 1882 E. Baseline St., from
8:30 to 10:30 a.m.
on Sept. 27.
And if you're a reader? How we go after the news directly affects what you see and when you'll see it online and in print. More on that momentarily.
Last week's discussion, sponsored by the
, began with the observation that two major TV networks had erroneously reported an innocent man as the shooter in the Sept. 16 rampage at the Navy Yard. It was hardly the first instance of a major screw-up on a breaking national story.
Several news organizations initially misidentified the brother of the Newtown, Conn., gunman as the suspect.
in reporting the Supreme Court's decision on President Obama's health care law. Most recently, those two cable networks, The Boston Globe and others incorrectly reported that a missing Brown University student was one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects. Redditt, an online community perceived as a leader in crowd-sourced journalism, took a lot of heat for allowing a
that seemed to encourage vigilantism.
Is this the new normal? Have we come to a point where we accept that confusion will reign and accuracy will suffer during the first few hours of a breaking story? Is this OK, as long as the truth eventually emerges?
Is there any desire -- or, for that matter, any monetary value -- in holding fast to the traditional model of reporting, verifying, editing and only then publishing what you know to be true? In other words, does accuracy even matter in the marketplace?
All three speakers counseled against getting caught up in a manic drive to be first at all costs. More important, they said, is to be right. In today's universe of speculative tweets, viral Facebook shares and free-wheeling citizen bloggers, nothing is more valuable than credibility, they agreed. Organizations like The New York Times, NPR and The Oregonian have earned readers' trust by reporting responsibly and accurately, even as they acknowledge their mistakes online, on the air and in print.
But being first or right is not an either-or proposition. Speed and accuracy can and must go together. But that's not all that today's journalists should strive for.
Understanding social media and participating responsibly are a sign of relevancy.
Delivering a steady dose of enterprise -- that is, original, organic reporting bolstered by research and analysis -- demonstrates depth and public service.
Committing genuinely to transparency and community engagement signals respect for readers.
For mainstream media outlets that find themselves swimming alongside independent bloggers, advocacy organizations and news aggregators, all of the above can help build trust with discerning readers.
So what does all of this have to do with
and you as readers?
My colleague, Samantha Swindler, editor of the Leader, worries that accuracy and credibility don't matter anymore insofar as the media giants are concerned.
"I don't think CNN really cares that much that they got it wrong because people keep coming back and watching them -- and we've accepted that that's OK," Swindler says. "Back in the day, you had reporters who'd lose their jobs if they were inaccurate."
Today's reporters increasingly are urged to go out and collect the news, post it as they get it and add more to it later. This approach to what's called "iterative reporting" doesn't mean reporting rumors or unverified information. It does mean going with what you've got and adding more information and context later.
"It's changing the idea of what a deadline is and what a complete story is, and I think the audience accepts and expects that," Swindler said. "The whole process of gathering news is more apparent and open, and we can have a dialogue (with readers) over that level of journalism."
As part of the
that debuts Oct. 1, we at the Leader will ramp up the volume and sophistication of our digital journalism. You'll continue to see the Leader's newsroom staff participating in social media; generating enterprise stories; and attributing facts, quotes and other information to specific sources and documents.
And, even as technology and file-sharing expand the speed and reach at which news is viewed and spread, our commitment to ethical journalism will continue to guide us as we embrace the challenge of covering news and features that matter to the people of western Washington County.
George Rede is the Leader's Opinion editor.
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