by Ivey Merrill
In August 2016, Facebook fired its “trending” curator team and replaced it with an algorithm. Within three days, the algorithm pushed out a false story about Fox News host Megyn Kelly, a controversial piece about an SNL star verbally attacking Ann Coulter, and articles linking to a man masturbating with a McDonald’s chicken sandwich. Lynn Walsh was lead investigative reporter at NBCTV San Diego and a past national president of the Society of Professional Journalists. She’s part of a project working to gain back the trust of the public through transparency and open conversation with journalists and news organizations. We connected with Walsh for her opinion on how the news industry can do this.
Q: What’s wrong with corporate media right now?
Lynn Walsh: Journalists do the best they can, but here’s what gets in the way: the speed of putting things together, the perceived necessity to be first, rushing to publication and limited resources. Before, people consumed information via their doorstep, their TV screen, or the radio. That was reliable. Now, people can seek out information from all over the place, and distinguishing fact from opinion is harder than ever.
Q: What’s a good way for people to discern credible journalism from not-so-credible journalism?
LW: I have two main suggestions and the absence of any of these is a red flag:
Google the story. If you see 20-30 other organizations are reporting it and you recognize some of them, then the source is credible. Look at the source. What website is it? Is it one you’ve heard of? What’s the domain name? The URL? Is it abc.co.com? That’s not an actual news organization—that’s someone taking news organizations names and adding different acronyms to the end of URLs to make them look credible.
Do they have an “About Us” page, and what does it say? Does it tell who they are, who owns them, where they’re based, their contact information? Does it have a staff name for a story or just “news team?”
Q: You mentioned that to regain trust from the public, journalists should stick to their ethics. Could you elaborate?
LW: For the average consumer, I don’t know if they even think of the ethics of journalism or inner working of news organizations. They just consume content. However, no matter the medium you’re using or publishing in—TV, print, web, radio, or social media—your ethics shouldn’t change. A lot of the time, you hear, “Oh, it’s just a tweet.” No, it’s still news, and it should still be held to that standard. The way we consume information is totally different now. Our Trusting News Project is helping journalists to better explain stories to the public and explain why we chose one story over another since that’s our job now. Be open. Be transparent. We all have to be more conscientious about where our information is coming from.
Check out The Trusting News Project at trustingnews.org.
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