The news is out that flight MH370 from Malaysia Airlines is gone. There is no reason to believe that there are any survivors, but one thing that did thrive is CNN’s ratings. Unfortunately for CNN, their coverage was bogus.
Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart said that CNN’s mentality behind covering this was, “F#&K it, let’s go nuts.” The news network delivered, focusing more on graphics, conspiracy theories, and telling viewers what a plane looks like, rather than the actual news at hand.
I understand that as a news network, the Malaysia story is something that is going to draw an audience, because people care about it. It may not have an impact on everybody’s everyday life, but the suspense pulls you in.
But to say that the plane was pulled into a black hole? I second Jon Stewart.
Fox News or MSNBC did not seem to do much better. Fox News went on to bash CNN for their news coverage. It seems clear to me that networks are focusing more on making money than actually reporting the news. There are times in the media where no news is no news. In some ways I applaud Fox News for calling CNN out on their nonsense, but also wish they did not over-analyze.
Did Social Media do it right? According to Topsy, from when the news broke that the plane went missing to when we learned of its ultimate demise, there have been nearly four million tweets mentioning Flight MH370. I also noticed a trend. It looks like less people were tweeting or retweeting posts in between the news of it going missing and the announcement that the plane was gone. To me, that shows that people stopped tuning in to theories that they did not believe were reasonable. As a human, I want the facts to come from reliable sources, and try to stay away from listening to 20 different theories. As a prospective journalist, my job as a reporter is to get the news from those sources, and report it. I don’t get paid to broadcast my opinion (nor at all yet, I might add) because I am not an analyst.
One organization that got it right was the Washington Post, who although they gave various possibilities, they did not dumb down their audience by proposing that there’s a black hole somewhere. There are plenty of possibilities, and at the time I post this, we still don’t have the answers.
Overall, many news organizations focused more on theory than reporting on what they knew. It is fine to have theories, but they should not make up the centerpiece of a broadcast news program. Research, interview, and get whatever information is needed to report the facts. Organizations need to realize that hardly anyone cares about who reported the news first. Instead, they want the news to be informative, and not about black hole theories.
Category Archives: social media
OPINION: Social media journalism not efficient
Social media platforms such as Twitter make sports journalism more interactive.
Social media has exploded in popularity over the years, but it has caused big issues in the journalism world.
False information in the media has always been around, but with the ability to tweet or share to Facebook in a matter of seconds, many journalists have rushed to be the first to get their information out there.
“I generally hear about news on Twitter before anywhere else,” said sophomore Meghan Prevost via Twitter.
The issue it raises is are they focusing more on getting information out first than the real issues at hand?
Throughout my time in college, I was always told that nobody remembers who got the information out first. However, everyone remembers the news organization that got it wrong. It’s not as much about fact checking and getting it right anymore, and it’s diminishing the trust that people have for the media.
“Social media often screws up the accuracy of reporting. Most news outlets are more interested in being “the first on scene” or whatever than ensuring their info is right. So, they post whatever little findings they have on their social media pages to keep the people going and make it seem like there’s a real scoop. Take the Sandy Hook shooting, for instance. The media was so anxious to put a name and face to who did it that they actually gave the wrong Lanza brother,” says Catherine Cappucci via Facebook.
The Sandy Hook incident ties into Quinnipiac, as the wrong Lanza brother happened to be an alum, sending the Mt. Carmel campus into a frenzy. The rush to get information out first causes credibility to be lost, and unless journalists get back to back-checking all of the information, users will only find it tougher to put their trust in them.
So, what can a social media site like Twitter be used for? Personally, I think sports, specifically NASCAR have utilized social media perfectly since 2012. In February 2012 during the Daytona 500, when part of the car broke, causing calamity on the track, a new era for the sport was born.
There was a two hour delay in the race trying to put the fire out and repair the track, and during that time, racer Brad Keselowski happened to have his phone on him, and tweeted a photo from the seat of his car. Overnight, Keselowski gained over 100,000 followers on Twitter, and set the stage for NASCAR to get more involved in social media. It made the sport more interactive and entertaining to watch.
Ultimately, news organizations still have some work to do in order to get new information out correctly. For now, sports like NASCAR have taken the driver’s seat in ushering in a new era of journalism.
Opinion: Why Klout Fails
A week later, Klout still fails to process any new information.
Does Klout really deserve the slogan “The Standard for Influence?”
Last week, JRN 305 students were required to link our social media pages to see their influence. In journalism especially, posts on social media are important because personal opinions on a topic in the world could be reflected as the news organization’s views as well.
The average Klout user gets a score of 40 on a scale of 100. While that’s not necessarily a failing grade, it shows that many people do not branch out and have an influence on the outside world.
Klout requires a user to connect the vast majority of their social media accounts to see all of the demographics of a post, from likes, shares, retweets, etc., to where and who the people are that view their posts.
For this assignment in particular, I found myself having to connect my Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and my overly confusing Google+ account (Yes, I have a Google+ account, but maybe you’ll hear about that in another rant).
After connecting all of the accounts, I was given a score of 49, but with very little substance. Compared to other profiles, where they had top posts and got insight on their influence, I did not receive any demographic information or see a single one of my posts. I thought initially that it would be best to wait a few days and perhaps I would start seeing some of my posts and insight.
Unfortunately, a week has passed, and I have yet to see any new information on the site, despite me still being connected. I have found the site to be very buggy, which raised the question of whether or not the site is reliable.
Sophomore Nelianna Ferraro said in her blog that linking all accounts raises an issue. “If, however, Klout was to get hacked, the results would be disastrous. The hackers would have access to every account from Twitter to LinkedIn. It seems like Klout users are just supposed to trust the website to not be vulnerable to attacks,” says Ferraro.
With a lack of graphs or advise on how to adjust my own posts, it feels much less personalized than I ever could have imagined. It looks like a work in progress, but for now I’m not quite sure how I feel about Klout.
DeCosta News 