This week's task: Choose an online news article published by Time, The New York Times, or The Huffington Post and track its cited sources. Visit each source online and evaluate its credibility based on the guidelines set in Criteria to Evaluate the Credibility of WWW Resources. Draft a blog post that briefly states a potential impact of unrestricted web publishing through mass media as it relates to this article.
With the World Cup still in full swing, even though the Americans lost, I selected an article titled
This Is What Team USA Eats During The World Cup in the Huffington Post. It was interesting to me for a lot of reasons. I also found it interesting that there was no byline at the top of the article, rather this post at the bottom of it, "This interview has been edited and condensed. As told to Sarah Klein. Photo courtesy of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
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| Courtesy: Huffington Post |
It appears this interview was done by a writer who used excerpts of the article, and maybe not necessarily by Sarah Klein who conducted the interview. A lot of news stations, particularity in television, will have one person do an interview, like a producer or videographer, and then a reporter or another producer write or put together the story. I have done this on several occasions, and I'm not an advocate of it at all. Messaging gets lost, and it's often difficult to contact the source of the interview to go back and ask follow-up or clarifying questions. Unfortunately this technique is used to save time and resources, especially with scheduling issues. For this story though, it's fairly straight forward and nothing too significant seems like it could be lost or jeopardized in translation.
At the top of the article it does state the person who is being interview for the piece and her credentials on why she is an expert and being interviewed, which I did find extremely helpful and it gave the story more credibility.
The link to her name went to her Twitter profile which I thought was a nice touch and further added credibility to the story. On her Twitter page you could read more about her and see what she is tweeting about.
According to the standards from "Criteria to Evaluate the Credibility of WWW Resources" (Montecino 1998) this story does seem to be compiled with information from a credible source. One of the criteria listed is, "Is there any evidence that the author of the Web information has some authority in the field about which she or he is providing information? What are the author's qualifications, credentials and connections to the subject?
The above examples with the dietitian's information and experience does satisfy the standard that she is an authority in the field, and has the proper credentials to speak to what the U.S Soccer Team's diet is.
The potential impact of unrestricted web publishing through mass media is dangerous and irresponsible. It happens a lot now, especially since mass media desires more and newer content as soon as possible, and is competing for quantity over quality when it comes to web traffic which drives advertising. Shortcuts on the web are made for that reason all the time, with the theory of less sourcing and more content. Sourcing often doesn't sell, it consumes too much time, but an extra few articles might. That's why it's consumer beware in the ultra competitive times of mass and digital media.
Ryan,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. At times, translation does get lost when you have one person conduct the interview and another person actually write the story. I've experienced this issue first hand working as the Public Information Officer for the City of Atlanta Fire Rescue. I've interviewed with one person and someone else wrote the story. Needless to say, a retraction had to be printed.
I appreciate your interesting perspective on interview-based reporting, Ryan, and was compelled by the possibility that your chosen article may have been edited and condensed by someone other than the interviewer and/or done so in a way that could compromise the quality of the reporting.
ReplyDeleteI also like that you raise the troubling issue of "quantity over quality [... and] less sourcing and more content." This is a concern not only in new media, where a multimedia, sound-bite, less-is-more mentality is common, but also in traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, and television news, for which economic realities are putting on the pressure to sanitize, sensationalize, dumb down, or otherwise manipulate material to increase or maintain viewership/readership.
I never gave it much thought on whether if the same person who conducts the interview, is the same person that writes up the article. I do not agree with two different people conducting those tasks neither. Like you said, messaging does get lost and the intent and tone of what was said is important as well. I believe this is why often times people are misquoted in articles.
ReplyDelete