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Ethical Issue: Who to trust in this social media era?

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I forgot who said this but I bet most people would not disagree: everyone could be “journalist” in social media platform.

What is social media? Antony Mayfield defined it in his book “ What is social media,” (2007) as “a group of new kinds of online media” which “encourages contributions and feedback from everyone who is interested.”

And social media provides people a no-cost platform to publish their thoughts, which makes information spread easier and faster. But, there are cons and pros for everything. Rumors circulate rapidly subsequent to the wide use of social media. Many news organizations nowadays more and more rely on social media to promote their news stories, which is good, however some credulous news organizations repost information without deep investigating and double checking from sources who is not in professional journalism fields. If the information later on was found out to be wrong, the biggest problem is not damages on that news organization’s reputation but the influence on audience who already believed in the rumors.

Here’s an example.

Chinese National Geography used an old wedding photo of a couple in Shanxi Province, China as their cover picture of June 2002. This photo was rumored to be a ghost wedding on the Internet saying this couple was already dead when taking this picture.

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It’s never been taken seriously because no one knows where the rumor is from. The source is not trustful. Thus everyone takes it as a horror joke.

However, this photo was being put on the spot again in this June and it caused a lot attention this time.

A well-know Taiwanese blogger @台南阿呆仔 reposted two news articles in Weibo (similar to twitter) from two Taiwanese newspaper DongSen Daily and The Apple criticizing Chinese National Geography for using this picture as magazine cover and describing it as “ghost couple”. Furthermore, these two newspaper pointed out that the couple in the picture are from Fangliao, Taiwan referring to a post from @我是枋寮人（I’m fangliaonese) in Facebook who said this couple is his great grandparetns.

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Chinese National Geography’s official account posted a statement in Weibo titled “Don’t use dispelling to spread rumors”. In the statement, Chinese National Geography cleared up the question of “ghost couple” and where this couple truly comes from.

They provided the photocopies of the magazine in June, 2002 showing there is no such description that saying this is a ghost wedding. The original article was mainly introducing the culture and development of Shanxi merchant.

Chinese National Geography also stated that they purchased this photo from a famous photographer Zheng Liu declaring the legal authorization to use the photo.

The second part of the statement is Chinese National Geography questioning @台南阿呆仔 and other well-know bloggers who reposted and spread the rumor. They specially mentioned Wangyi News which is one of the most widely known online news organization in China, and they said they are sorry that, as a news organization with millions of loyal readers, Wangyi has, whether on purpose or not, took part in spreading rumor and criticizing them without investigating.

After the statement came out, @台南阿呆仔, Wangyi News and other influential news accounts posted their apologies to Chinese National Geography, but not Dongsen Daily and The Apple, the origins of this rumor.

The rise of social media provides people like @ 台南阿呆仔 an opportunity to spread their opinions to the public, but meanwhile rumors feed on the fact that there is no standard and principle for such “social media journalists”. We, as being trained as professional journalists should realize the current state of social media and thinking about how to regulate it.

Ellis Henican: Whatever I’m Doing is Finding Stories

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Last Friday, Ellis Henican stopped by and gave a public conversation at Visitor Center of Northeastern University invited by Bill Lancaster for his Business of Entertainment class in Communication studies. This course focuses on the business side of the entertainment industry, including global content distribution, entertainment law, product marketing and publicity, among other topics.

Ellis Henican is best known for his political contributions on Fox News’s hit programs such as The O’Reilly Factor and Fox News Watch, as well as his investigation led to a Pulitzer Prize at New York Newsday. And he’s also a columnist at Newsday and AM New York as well as a host at a nationally syndicated weekend show on Talk Radio Network. What people not familiar with him is that he is a storytelling professional in all media mediums, not just on television, newspaper and radios but also on social media. Lancaster says that, “Though Howard Stern claims to be the king of media, Ellis wears the true crown, having major success in most media realms not only in political television, but also books, journalism and radio.” Henican started off the lecture by introducing himself as an “oral-tradition” person, “…getting people talking to me, making them comfortable during conversation is something I’m good at…as a reporter, a writer,” said Henican. After that, we got the chance to hear his thoughts about the industry and how he got his start as a journalist at the Kentucky Post.

Henican further told us the story of how he dealt with the victim’s family when he had to write about a murder case when he was around 22 years old. “It requires you, as a writer and a reporter, that deal with human being people under very difficult circumstance ”, said Henican, “and it’s important that you write about it because it’s something barely happen in the city or community, and people need to know it, you can’t just ignore it”. It was hard for him to interview the young 19-year-old male victim’s mother at the first time, Henican admitted, “My hand is shaking.” But he went on his interviewing because he wanted to write a good story. “I wanted people know that your son was not just a statistic, was not just something on a police report or somewhere, but was somebody that people care about…he has a life, has stuff to do, school, friends and he has a family.” Henican convinced the victim’s mother to consider this interview as not just forcing her to recall something horrible happened to her son but an opportunity for people to care about this case.

Henican then brought up with the thought that the most important thing on presenting a story is “the technology continues to change”. He started his career as an opinionated journalist in a newspaper, and then he talked on TV shows, radio shows. And now, as the Internet grows rapidly, Hencian took advantage of twitter, Facebook to report instant news and personal thoughts. “Try not to quit job, try to add jobs,” said Henican. Henican believes that as technology changed, people got the chance to present their own opinions. He thinks that with social media, we have the most powerful storytelling platform that’s ever been invented. Social media success, said Ellis Henican, begins with a story well told.

Personally I think tweeting is the most efficient way to report breaking news. As audience switched their attention to social media, twitter stands out by providing instant and brief news content from all possible resources.

Tweeting is good. But what if it cause people only care about what’s happening, not what’s really going on behind the scene? Tweets are brief and short, it only presents what people see in the first place. However in-depth report matters as much as having breaking news.  As Henican said, “Try not to quit job, try to add jobs.” Journalists should take advantage of social media like twitter to draw attention from readers, and meanwhile keep the readers in the news mediums that publish detailed and in-depth news reports(blog, online news site, newspaper, etc).