Imaginary News

For the past few years, the Internet has been my only source of news, except for the occasional issue of The Onion that I pick up at the Union. I canceled my subscription to the Sunday edition of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel after they stopped including a TV guide. As media analysts across the country are noticing, this trend of putting down the paper is increasing rapidly. Shira Ovide of The Wall Street Journal notes that almost two-thirds of the nation’s top 25 papers’ circulation shrank at least 10% since September 30. It’s undeniable that Internet news is faster and more convenient for most readers, but at what price does our convenience come?

Websites like Twitter and CNN.com are high traffic websites that break and update many important news stories. The speed at which the news is broken on these sites, however, leaves a lot of room for error. CNN.com is assumed to be a responsible news website that fact checks stories before they are published on the Internet. Therefore, when CNN published a story on September 11, 2009 that the nation was under attack, the nation briefly panicked. Unfortunately for CNN, the alleged attack we were under was actually a US Coast Guard drill. CBS news was quick to critique CNN’s faux pas. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs even commented on this situation, stating that before reporting terrorism attacks checking facts would be useful.

If a major media contributor like CNN can mistakenly report a terrorist attack, the credibility of Internet news is questionable. Blogger Jeremy Pointer notes that today’s news providers are more concerned with being first than being right. Print stories run through strict editing and fact checking, while Internet news sources post news rapidly, doing fact checking and alterations after the original posting. Print stories and newspapers have the pressure to create a completely accurate story since edits cannot be made as easily. Pointer states that only 29% of Americans believe that news organizations get facts straight. In 1955, that rate was 26% higher.

Although detrimental things like fake terrorism don’t usually slip by editors, it leads the mind to wonder what other factual errors exist on highly reputable news websites. With small errors in reporting, citizens can easily form opinions from imaginary facts. Although print journalism isn’t perfect, the American people trusted journalism more when they could hold it in their hands. While the speed of today’s news is wonderful, there’s something very romantic about the credibility of old-fashioned newspapers. Perhaps I’m outdated, but I would rather read the news the morning after and know the truth rather than live in a state of panic while pressing my browser’s ‘refresh’ button repeatedly.

With huge mistakes such as CNN’s, I question the fate of the media as well. Between CNN stating the nation was under attack and Twitter telling me that Jeff Goldblum died, my heart’s endured more false trauma than necessary this year. Perhaps I’ll subscribe to the Journal Sentinel once more.