Social Media Putting Pressure On Journalism

With social media testing journalism, newspeople have to maintain the industry’s core virtues -- fairness, accuracy and the like -- to maintain ethics in reporting, a group of industry leaders said.

“We don’t like to be told that Twitter kicked the mainstream media’s butt. I think that gets to journalists,” said Internet Broadcasting’s Scott Libin, chair of the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) ethics committee. “But we need to be aware of that and develop our own standards, which includes being right even if it doesn’t mean being first.”

Libin, along with Michigan Radio’s Vince Duffy, a past RTDNA chairman, and WDEL-AM Wilmington (DL)’s Chris Carl, the current chairman, said it is becoming increasingly difficult for journalists to maintain ethical reporting practices, largely because of the pressures imposed by social media.

Social media, particularly Twitter, is testing journalistic standards by pushing out large amounts, though often unconfirmed, information that reporters are expected to compete with, they said. Libin said the problems that arise from social media -- from the abundance of unconfirmed reports, to the demand on reporters to have the correct information first -- are not wholly new, but journalists need to protect themselves from getting swept up in them.