“The Twitterization of politics,” says Commentary editor-in-chief John Podhoretz, “really is leading people to overreact.”
Technological advancement is rife with unintended consequences. An advancement in computer-driven social networks has shifted the sand under the news foundation.
During a tornado outbreak in Dallas/Fort Worth in the spring of 2011 a spotter comment was posted in a chat room run by the National Weather Service (NWS) in Fort Worth that went around the world. The is a “closed” room, the NWS office decides who gets in. most of the people in the room that were emergency responders and meteorologist for local media, airlines and utilities. There was also a network of weather spotters and ham radio operators in the room; it was from this source the phrase “wedge tornado” in an urban area went viral Provided instant credence because of its source, area media reacted immediately to the ground report. As it was twitted by local media it was picked up by national news organizations and spread at a exponential pace for at least an hour. It was sensational, timely (there had already been a slew of confirmed tornadoes in the previous few hours) and suggested a “high-impact” event.
The Twitter post was also untrue, a mistaken interpretation of a rain shaft and strong winds. Unfortunately the social media stream is a wave propagating out in all directions in a world where distance is irrelevant. The posts eventual correction lacked the sensation to create the same reach and span.
The social network explosion has a potential to draw too many of us to the shallowest end of the pool of television news. Social media rewards the sensational. It provides instant comment for a treasured metric - the production of a response. It moves faster and is more public than overnight ratings, a near instant gratification that can seen, tracked and quantified. Suddenly the TV news presentation becomes an interactive video game. There is a new measurement of journalistic success: can it incite the pushing of “like” buttons and re-tweets? Can it reverberate through social media (all in a mere fraction of the time of the [now redefined] news cycle)? The desire for an affirmation fix can skew the news judgement toward emotional stories most likely to produce emotional response. The deeper water, the noble pursuit of truth and the moral core of journalism can be distracted by vigorous splashing in the shallow water.
The seductive idea that emotional response is a good metric to judge news value is to forget that crazy person you dated briefly in collage. He/she excelled in pushing you around the sharp edges of of jealousy and desire. Do you remember how exhausting all that was? Good relationships shouldn't create big drama, if might make for a good segment for a daytime talk show, such theatre is usually a sign that a relationship ISN’T working. Would you ever have a news director say the same of a news story?
These are dangerous times for news integrity. It is a certain irony that the free enterprise system in a two-party democracy (one would argue in its current state a plutocracy-funded “party of the incumbent”) has produced the equivalent of state-run television that serves a political purpose. There is a media business model now that takes the complexity of governance and renders it a shallow blood sport in a culture war.
Instead of serving a political party with emotional hooks news would serve reasoned debate. News should serve knowledge for knowledge’s sake, try to ignore the fact that facts have become politicized. How will it be possible to have reasoned debate unless we embrace reason as a better response to fear and parsing the complex.
To evolve toward this betterment requires a rebuke to the momentum of a celebrity culture that cultivates emotional response. A response that has found a linked-in feedback mechanism for instant gratification the social media provides. It is the newest echo chamber but does ringing its bell produce a hollow sound?
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