March 14, 2007
Websites for Ethical Improvement
by Andrew McGregor
Yesterday, the journalists were divided into teams and given the task of conceptually developing a new science news website employing the interactive and graphic potential of the internet.
This is a stab at an emerging venue of journalism and a profound statement on the current state of journalistic affairs.
Television news is largely an overwhelming sensory experience with viewers pinned to their seats by slick graphics and sound effects selling what is not normally considered news.
If people were really interested in Anna Nicole Smith beyond pathological voyeurism they would not need to be sold by graphics.
This conference has been floated on two conflicting notions of the America public: one being that the American public wants journalism that cannot see above the tabloid and that the writers in this room somehow need to trick their editors into allowing them to do stories the science writers find innately fascinating.
The other notion is that the American public is actually being estranged and neglected, that when media moguls point to high ratings for scandalous content and all the advertising lucre that comes with it they are selling a huge lie; a grand part of a self-replicating delusion. In this model journalism is identical to entertainment, it serves no other role than to make money for its owners and its greatest virtue is in being so false that it upsets no one and can be completely forgotten as background noise.
This model is very successful. CNN and Fox News are indistinguishable reflections of each other, mouthing accusations of political bias while running partisan opinion as news and filling 24 hours of airtime.
Personally speaking, every time I tell someone that I am a graduate student in journalism they ask me why journalism is so bad, so stupid, so untrustworthy. They feel betrayed by an institution that is supposed to be handling something sacred.
Why have an interactive website? Why is it necessary to have blogs and viewer responses if the reporters have done their job and the story is great?
It is necessary in part because trust in journalism has been lost so that instead of being overwhelmed by graphics viewers would like to explore issues on their own. It may be that cynicism is the impetus for curiosity, and if so the scientific news websites discussed in the room should have a pleasant future. Innovative websites with strong user involvement and intellectual rigor are auspicious portents for what journalism can be like in the future; that they are unequivocally necessary is a damning comment on the condition of the fourth estate.
By Andrew McGregor, 03/14/07 at 9:27 am
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