What is the role of a readers’ editor in building trust and retaining it over a period of time? The answer to this question, according to Stephen Pritchard, is to take the readers into confidence and share with them the challenges before the media one represents. Mr. Pritchard has been the Readers’ Editor of the Observer , the Sunday paper from The Guardian group, ever since the post was created in 2001. He is a board member of the Organization of News Ombudsmen and served as its president for two terms. His advice to me a couple of years ago: “Traditional media, if it’s going to survive, must be credible. Credibility is an incredibly serious issue for news organizations. Do survey your audience’s views of your role; write about all the cases you handle in a year; go out and talk to the public at schools, colleges, town halls and community centers; use social media, especially Twitter, to publicize what you do; and write better, more entertaining columns. Don’t be dull!”
I earnestly try to follow his wise words and if any of my columns turned out to be dull, I apologise.
The challenges from digital platforms for a legacy newspaper like The Hindu are manifold. When a rumour goes viral, should the newspaper spend its expertise to debunk the rumour? What to do with motives being attributed for not covering something — something which happened only in the cyberspace and not in reality? Is it possible to offer an explanation for every trending topic and explore whether each claim is true or false? In two stark instances — the attacks on students from Northeast India and the claims following the Boston Marathon bombing — digital platforms played an inflammatory role.
Impact of InternetThe recent research on the impact of the Internet is revealing. The initial euphoria about the empowering potential of the digital platforms has given way to a more sober reasoning. Andrew Keen’s book, The Internet Is Not the Answer , questions some of the assumptions of the early digital evangelists. He wrote: “The error that evangelists make is to assume that the Internet’s open, decentralised technology naturally translates into a less hierarchical or unequal society. But rather than more openness and the destruction of hierarchies, an unregulated network society is breaking the old centre, compounding economic and cultural inequality, and creating a digital generation of masters of the universe. This new power may be rooted in a borderless network, but it still translates into massive wealth and power for a tiny handful of companies and individuals.”
It is worth reading the meticulous study of Craig Silverman titled “Lies, damn lies and viral content”, for the Columbia Journalism School’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism. His research reveals how news organisations that are meant to play a critical role in the dissemination of quality, and accurate information in society are challenged with the onslaught of hoaxes, misinformation, and other forms of inaccurate content that flow constantly over digital platforms.
He talks about a vicious-yet-familiar cycle: “A claim makes its way to social media or elsewhere online. One or a few news sites choose to repeat it. Some employ headlines that declare the claim to be true to encourage sharing and clicks, while others use hedging language such as “reportedly.” Once given a stamp of credibility by the press, the claim is now primed for other news sites to follow-on and repeat it, pointing back to the earlier sites. Eventually its point of origin is obscured by a mass of interlinked news articles, few (if any) of which add reporting or context for the reader.”
Within minutes or hours, according to Mr. Silverman, a claim can morph from a lone tweet or badly sourced report to a story repeated by dozens of news websites, generating tens of thousands of shares. He contends that once a certain critical mass is met, repetition has a powerful effect on belief. The rumour becomes true for readers simply by virtue of its ubiquity. The empirical evidence marshalled by Mr. Silverman stands testimony to his contention.
Occupying the middle path?However, the problem lies in his prescription for news organisations that maintain higher standards for the content they aggregate and publish. He says that these organisations don’t jump on viral content and emerging news — but, generally, nor do they make a concerted effort to debunk or correct falsehoods or questionable claims. He wants credible news organisations to “move to occupy the middle ground between mindless propagation and wordless restraint.” He laments that there are few journalists dedicated to checking, adding value to, and, when necessary, debunking viral content and emerging news.
Is it possible for trustworthy media organisations to have dedicated journalists to handle the veracity of viral content? Does the present economic model permit allocation of resources to debunking false news that emanate from social media? Can the counter-offensive work in the case of rumours and propaganda? Will the act of debunking restore truth and validate facts or will it be subjected to malicious interpretation? As an ombudsman in-charge of corrections in the print and the web platforms of this newspaper, I have witnessed a number of cases where readers remember the original mistake but seldom recollect corrections. In this media ecology, can the onus of tackling misinformation from cyberspace squarely be placed on legacy media?
readerseditor@thehindu.co.in
