Pot, Meet Kettle

Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute on a recent NPR technology podcast spoke about the impact that "social media" was having on the public at large. Here, we've used the terms B&B or participatory journalism for what Tompkins was giving the long look down the nose. Can you trust social media was the set-up:

"Just because a person says it and says it on-line in a Twitter page does not make it true. Not even close."

Pause for a moment. How long ago did we hear same said of newspapers by news makers? How many have had a personal experience with that?

Tompkins continued, noting "the enemy of truth is speed."

Hmm. Perhaps the enemy of accuracy can be speed, but time and time again the first version of a story proves to be the most true. What became of the old first write through of history? Apparently, doesn't count unless its a journalist.

I can think of a lot of enemies of truth -- self-interest, lack of open [fill in the blank with your choice of meetings, records, accounting], editorial filtering, etc.

One item Tompkins offered in support of speed killing truth was spot on. He bemoaned the desire of bloggers to throw up a story quickly, then verify it later. The need for speed and being first overriding good reporting practice of getting double sourced verification, as one example.

Problem is a lot of those bloggers is they aren't a bunch of Cheetos-fingered zealots; they are journalists doing that work for the legacy media's website. It is as if the newsroom is crowdsourced to the extreme -- throw it up on-line and see if it sticks.