I think Spiderman says it best when he says, “With Great power comes great responsibility.” We all are given so much more power in communication than ever before as the Internet takes our words across the planet and thousands of people can be impacted by a story. That line between our freedom of speech and accuracy of news stories has become blurred. In all 3 podcast we learn a little about not only our place as bloggers, facebook posters, and twitter fanatics but also the new form of journalism and what roles these news anchors, journalist, TV hosts play in this modern world of communication.
The first story ‘We Decide you Report” asks the question, is it ok for the journalist to pander their works towards the audience? The interviewer wants to know when is reporting no longer about news but more about what the audience wants. The Second story “Sue you!” is a story about the legal battle between a blogger and the person they were slandering in their blog. It focuses on the first amendment and makes us ask the question, when is the first amendment no longer protected for an individual. The last story “People in holes” goes back to the first story about selling news for the audience. It focuses on mankind’s morbid fascination with people being trapped underground. It goes back to the original podcasts question, does a journalist cater to an audience and when is news for the ratings and not the story.
In all of these stories there were a few places where I was a bit shocked by what I heard. The first story, the interviewer seemed to be a bit jaded about news stories catering to an audience instead of just telling news. This is a tough call when the new medium is online and news stories will not be read unless key words are triggered in a Google search. The next story was interesting to me to find out that the word Skank was found in court to be a word causes defamation. The person who blogged this word was denied her first amendment rights when the court ordered Google to give the bloggers name up to the court. The last story was the one that had the biggest lesson to learn. I was shocked to find out what happened to many of the people involved in the news sensational story about the 18 month old girl who fell down a well after the news stories faded. It was the first time local news gave 24 hour coverage on the story and the fame that the rescuer experienced, tainted him as he tried to chase that high again. It was too difficult for him to go back to the daily grind and he ended up taking his own life. This gave me a moment of pause, we, the audience only remember a breaking story for a few days and then we move on, the people in those stories have to live with that experience the rest of their lives.
Again, “With Great power comes Great Responsibility” We all can become media specialists, getting our words out there for the world to view but with this power comes the responsibility of ethics. We hear each day more and more people being sentenced for Internet media crimes than ever before. I think about the Facebook bullies that caused a girl to take her own life. They were just using their freedom of speech, but it caused pain to someone else. Then you have to ask, are they responsible for this girl’s death? Or Snowden who is able to leak government information for the entire world to see. His words hold so much power that he is wanted as criminal of the USA. These Podcasts make me reflect on not only my responsibilities as a blogger but also the media’s responsibilities. I believe that we need to treat online words as we would words the come out of our mouth. If we can’t say what we say online to that person or about that topic face to face then we shouldn’t write about it, and unfortunately many people use the opportunity to be anonymous as an outlet to say mean and harsh things.
The famous cliché “The words are mightier than the sword” is true in any form of media. We all need to be sure that we accurately reflect news, speak without defamation, and not try to hunt down a news story just for the ratings.
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