Can technology close journalism's credibility gap?
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COMMENTARY -- Later this week, the Wherever there has been a gross injustice because of abroken system, the muttering "transparency" usually isn't far behind. If wecan go behind the scenes, we'll spot trouble before it happens, and the actors--knowingwe're there--will all behave better.
The last three years have been a challenging for the press,as exemplified by episodes like RatherGate and the acceptance by Armstrong Williams, a nationally syndicated radio, TV andprint journalist, of $240,000 in exchange for his promotion of Bush'seducation agenda in his weekly column during the months leading up to thepresidential election.
Between these and other big media gaffs, the public hasgrown increasingly disenchanted with the media establishment, and is turning toother sources of information such as independent bloggers. Blog publishing hasgiven rise to several questions. Among them, what's the difference between ablogger and a journalist? Answer: None. Dan Gillmor was a journalist for the SanJose Mercury News. Today, he's a blogger for his own operation on
Likewise, while their voices can be seductive, there's noautomatic Good Housekeeping seal of approval on the integrity of thecontent that bloggers publish either. Bloggers and so called "citizenjournalists" have to earn their credibility, and the community at large does agood job of regulating the environment--quality will usually rise to the top.
To the extent that technology is what enabled an explosionin the number of journalists, starting from the early days of personal Webpages and now with blogs, my question is: What role can and shouldtechnology play in contributing to transparency--full disclosure--in the media?After all, given that it's been such an enabler to the revolution injournalism, shouldn't it also be a driving force in integrity as well?
By providing the uncensored, unedited raw data used to assemble a news story, opinion piece, or blog entry, the problems of misquoting, quote truncation, placing quotes out of order to arrive at an unintended meaning, quoting out of context, or manipulating interviews in the interests of a particular agenda could go away.
If you read my recently published opinion piece on how enterprises should consider the deployment of subscription-centric software infrastructures, you'll notice how that it relies extensively on the quotes of Scott Young,CEO of Userland. What you'll also notice is that where it quotes Young, therealso appears a code like [MP3 23:21]. This code is a pointer to theexact location in the MP3-based podcast of my interview with Young where his quote can be heard.
Where could we go from this sort of journalist's electronicbibliography? Any number of directions. As an infrastructure choice, podcastingmakes sense because it enables multiple multimedia enclosures to be packagedtogether for delivery on a subscription basis. A journalist's audience canoptionally subscribe to and review some of the material that was used toassemble a story.
This approach obviously can't deliver 100 percent transparency. The raw material behind a credible story may exist in a varietyof media, and there's also the thorny issue of protecting sources. Also, withno software to make it easy to map quotes to specific locations in a sound orvideo file, this sort of transparency puts a significant burden on the journalist.
The notion of transparency as applied to journalists or evencorporations can be even more extensive than publishing unedited tapes or transcriptsalong with opinion pieces. At the end of the interview with UserLand CEO ScottYoung, he offered to send me a book by Rogers Cadenhead on how to use Radio UserLand. I accepted the offer. It's notunusual for vendors to provide journalists who are reviewing their technologywith additional documentation. But, as I played the recording back and thoughtof how transparency was in effect, I couldn't be absolutely certain that allmembers of ZDNet's audience would see it the same way. I'm not going to sendmy address to Scott Young and, instead, if I decide that I need the book, Iwill pay the $24 charge for it with my own company's money. Already,transparency is having its effect.
I do hope that you write to me (david.berlind@cnet.com) andlet me know what you think. Also, I hope other journalists take what I'vedone into consideration and expand on the idea. In the name of integrity, wewon't know the answers until we start trying some solutions.
You can write to me at david.berlind@cnet.com. If you're looking for my commentaries on other IT topics, check my blog Between the Lines.
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