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When CNN released its new iPhone application this week, the big news wasn't so much that the app was out there, but that CNN had the audacity to charge money for it. Nearly two whole dollars for news? In this online land of plenty? Bah! The Associated Press has a free news app -- as it didn't fail to point out when it covered the release of the CNN application. Also, a lot of large-scale, general interest news organizations already have special sites designed specifically for the mobile browsers on iPhones and other devices.
Citizen journalism has always been a problem in my book. 1st hand, on-the-spot reporting and a wide variety of 'viewpoints' on events and issues is very alluring.
The problem for me is that without an 'editor' in the information stream it is inevitable that the results include unbalanced and/or unverified 'news'. Sometimes the errors or 'slants' are unintentional such as 'viewing' the subject through too small a 'window'. But often the errors are not errors, but intentional misrepresentation to support a particular point of view. These are known as lies. Lies of the sort which gain credibility by being repeated endlessly through the viral news network of the Web.
One possible restraint on inaccurate reporting and lies is of course the 'rating' of the source by readers. However, this system can be subverted by floods of ratings posted to intentionally discredit the source.
Two changes that might increase the credibility of both the ratings and subsequently the rated would be to require reference sourcing and forcing the viral spread to include the full original text, author, rating and a link back to the original.
Reference sourcing is simply all ratings being required to either provide a supporting link to anything represented as 'fact' or have the rating listed as opinion only.
In considering the rating of an author I would see the total ratings plus the number of those which were considered opinion. Example: 'author' Positive: 84/72; Negative: 119/118 Clicking on any of the numbers might give me access to the actual rating comments by category.
While still open to distortion, this would make it easier to debunk an author or much more work to intentionally discredit an author. Sort of like the 'helpful' annotation in Amazon reviews.
Whether this is a viable suggestion or not, there has to be some means of credibility rating citizen journalism or it will just become 'noise' to thoughtful readers and 'fodder for fanatics'.
Either of these results would result in losing the incredible potential of citizen journalism.
The problem for me is that without an 'editor' in the information stream it is inevitable that the results include unbalanced and/or unverified 'news'. Sometimes the errors or 'slants' are unintentional such as 'viewing' the subject through too small a 'window'. But often the errors are not errors, but intentional misrepresentation to support a particular point of view. These are known as lies. Lies of the sort which gain credibility by being repeated endlessly through the viral news network of the Web.
One possible restraint on inaccurate reporting and lies is of course the 'rating' of the source by readers. However, this system can be subverted by floods of ratings posted to intentionally discredit the source.
Two changes that might increase the credibility of both the ratings and subsequently the rated would be to require reference sourcing and forcing the viral spread to include the full original text, author, rating and a link back to the original.
Reference sourcing is simply all ratings being required to either provide a supporting link to anything represented as 'fact' or have the rating listed as opinion only.
In considering the rating of an author I would see the total ratings plus the number of those which were considered opinion. Example: 'author' Positive: 84/72; Negative: 119/118 Clicking on any of the numbers might give me access to the actual rating comments by category.
While still open to distortion, this would make it easier to debunk an author or much more work to intentionally discredit an author. Sort of like the 'helpful' annotation in Amazon reviews.
Whether this is a viable suggestion or not, there has to be some means of credibility rating citizen journalism or it will just become 'noise' to thoughtful readers and 'fodder for fanatics'.
Either of these results would result in losing the incredible potential of citizen journalism.
