Highly Contagious Paranoia: News spreads faster than the flu

Written for Editors Weblog

In the last few days, the top trending topic on Twitter has been "Swine Flu" (with "Mexico" in third). Thousands of blog posts mentioned the outbreak and Google reported that "Swine Flu Ohio, " "CDC" and "Swine Flu Symptoms" were in the top 100 searches. The news has spread faster than the epidemic itself, breeding a paranoia more severe and contagious than the actual disease.

British papers exemplify how the news creates a "pandemic" by publishing the swine flu as more severe than it really may be. Several tabloids purposefully generate fear in the public with phrases like "Prepared for the Apocalypse" in the Independent or, The Express with, "around a third of all humans could easily die off" as it compares swine flu to the black plague, SARS and the avian virus.

Using an ugly photograph of a pig, The Mirror chose to focus on two reported cases in Scotland with a headline that reads "SWINE FLU IS HERE" and follows with an exaggeration that says "Sore throat at breakfast ... dead by teatime ...how the last flu pandemic killed 40 million."

The Mexican press has also fallen into the "amarillista" (yellow journalism) trap as PRNoticias reports it. Every newspaper in Mexico has included a section on the swine flu. Even El Economista, a business and finance paper, created "Especial: GripePorcina" that explains the symptoms, prevention and cures. They even tie in the epidemic to the economic recession in Mexico.

Meanwhile, it has been reported that most of those contaminated have already recovered and the US public health officials are saying that although they call it a "nationwide public health emergency," there is really no reason to panic. Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano said that it sounds more severe than it really is and "is standard operating procedure allowing us to free up federal, state and local agencies and their resources."

Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organization's assistant director-general ad interim for Health Security and Environment stated, "I believe the world is more prepared than we ever have been before for this kind of situation...we have new defenses, better surveillance, stockpiles of antiviral drugs"

The Chinese government, in an effort to avoid the cover-ups during the SARS outbreak, promises to make public any cases of the swine flu they see. State-run newspapers urged them to be open and honest taking into account how concealed SARS information was also a cause for public panic. "Disclosure of information will help to swiftly sever channels of infection," said a commentary in the People's Daily, official newspaper of the ruling Communist Party. "Now we must stress that any case of swine fever, even if it is merely a suspected case, must be immediately reported and immediately made public, ensuring the public's right to know, and making everyone vigilant to block the spread of the disease."

Online news coverage of the flu has also gotten creative, such as Nyt.com's and USA Today's use of interactive maps that show where flu cases have been reported and how many. China shows us that newspapers, as the watchdogs of society, can provide the public with the news it needs to understand the situation and remain calm. However, as sensationalist newspapers show, they also have the power to generate commotion, and terror depending on the words they chose. "I for one have told our folks it wasn't that long ago that bird flu was going to wipe out hundreds of people around the world," said MSNBC's president, Phil Griffin, "let's be sober about it." It is up to newspapers to be sensible in their reporting in an effort to protect the public with information.

Source: Slate, TechCrunch, Reuters, USA Today, PRNoticias, Washington Post

What if blogs could be rated by credibility?

Written for Editors Weblog

As the Internet makes it possible for anybody to become a journalist, news is becoming available in all forms and opinions; it is difficult to be sure of the truth. At the World Wide Web conference in Madrid, software developers talked about their efforts in creating programs that will automatically rank Web content credibility by analysing the information presented.

The Know-Center in Austria is working on software that will rate blogs in three categories: "high credibility", "average credibility", and "little credible." It will analyse the number of times words are repeated and will compare blogs with mainstream news articles.

One argument as to why such coding may be problematic is that people may be ranked low for showing their point of view, even if the facts are correct. However, others say that the point is to help readers find unbiased information.

But as blogs start gaining credibility, what will this do to newspaper websites? It is possible that competition will grow, for better or for worse. One silver lining for newspapers may be that since their birth, newspapers have been fueled by competition, which has always pushed them to be better and better.

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Source: ars technica, AFP

Citizen watchdogs: the growth of citizen photographers

Written for the Editors Weblog

Citizen photojournalism comes into question once again with the aftermath of G20. As citizens are increasingly equipped with gadgets that photograph and video, surveillance of society also increases. Some argue that they should own the rights to their image and others say we should have the freedom to take and publish pictures of anything. One thing is sure; there are more photographers out their doing the work of watchdog.

During the G20 protests, a policeman knocked a man, Ian Tomlinson to the ground, who died a few minutes later. If the death was caused by the fall, nobody knows for sure, but there are several pictures of Ian Tomlinson that day that captured him hours before the push, during the push, and even after. In another epoch this would have been a highly difficult reality, but today with millions of citizens equipped with cameras, this is even commonplace at an event like G20.

"What we are witnessing, as any professional photojournalist will tell you, is the unstoppable rise of the citizen-photographer," wrote Ian Jack from The Guardian, who also said "it will be words and not pictures that tell us" the truth about the Tomlinson incident and others like it.

As citizen photojournalists grow, access to their photos also grows. There are numerous Web site services today that make it easier for individuals to broadcast their images, even with the possibility of pay. Photojournalism is changing along with the rest of news media. As it is unstoppable, newsrooms, journalists and governments are discussing how far the public surveillance should go.

Source: TheGuardian.co.uk

Collaboration: The Future of Investigative Journalism

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The second day of the Logan Symposium at UC Berkeley had a panel devoted to the future of investigative journalism, considering "recently it has not been a high priority for editors and publishers," due to the time, money and energy that goes into it.

The discussions involved different leaders in the field such as, Robert Rosenthal of the Center for Investigative Reporting, and Buzz Woolley, chairman of the board and primary funder of Voice of San Diego. The air was relatively optimistic as the speakers focused on collaboration as the key to the future of investigative journalism.

Bill Keller, of the New York Times said, "I don't think investigative journalism will go away, and there is emerging media that will be partly profit, partly non-profit, partly collaborative, partly competitive, mainly online". Robert Rosenthal, of CIR said, "Last year I said the business model for newspapers was toast. Now I believe that collaboration is going to be very important for profit and nonprofit journalism". Esther Kaplan, of The Nation Institute Investigative Fund says that partnerships in the field "are in their infancy" and they take a lot of work to happen. "We should consider a lot more, like joint investigation sites, shared technology for micro-financing," she added.

While talking about non-profit being new to investigative journalism, Chuck Lewis, of American University mentioned several non-profits that are growing; "there's the Center for Public Integrity and ProPublica which started recently. New non-profits are springing up all over the U.S. -- the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, and others are forming as we speak, in Boston, in Texas and Colorado and other places and they're all looking for advice."

Recent non-profits talked about are ProPublica and VoiceOfSanDiego.org. ProPublica commenced in January 2008 as "an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest." The company uses its funding to support 28 staff, who produce investigative reporting which is then given, not sold, to news outlets. VoiceOfSanDiego.org started early this year as a non-profit, online-only publication focusing on quality investigative reporting for the San Diego area. Other recent projects pertaining to the field are the HuffPost's investigative journalism fund and the efforts of two former Wall Street Journal reporters to start an investigative company. And then there are the older organizations like CIR, which was founded in 1977 and is currently developing its newsroom to adapt to the 21st century and lead investigative journalism through the transformations.

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Source: journalism.co.uk, PBS.org

Is music an acceptable tool for journalists?

Written for Editors Weblog

A Pew survey found recently that many online journalists are worried that with the rise of the Internet, journalistic values are changing. The majority showed they think journalists are being less prudent, working faster and losing their clout. The most recent questioning of these changes was in an article by Regina McCombs, on April 1, in which she casts doubt on the presence of music in photojournalism projects.

The main dilemma lies in the fact that music usually creates an emotional pull in a story. If journalists use music is it still journalism or is it now an opinionated work of art? "The problem is not that music doesn't work, it's that it works too well," said Al Tompkins, Poynter's broadcast and online group leader. The temptation to use music is hard to ignore, it adds a whole other level to a story, but is it the correct level?

Although Tom Kennedy, a managing editor for multimedia editor at the Washington Post, prefers natural sounds in stories, he said that "sometimes a bit of well-used music can set up a sublime counterpoint to the movement of the images themselves and be the real point of focus for a piece that owes more to art than journalism."

Many seemed to agree that adding material that was not gathered through the reporting process is what makes the whole idea questionable. Brian Storm, president of the media production company MediaStorm, says music "doesn't make a piece work -- all the elements have to be working. It's like another gear you have." Meaning the photojournalism should tell the story and not the music.

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Source: PoynterOnline.

Recently launched Iranian newspaper gets shut down

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IRNA (Islamic Republic News Agency) reported on Monday that the pro-government, state-owned, newspaper, Korshid (Sun), was shut down as a cost cutting measure.

Korshid had a short life seeing as it was only launched in October of last year. According to Ali Zabihi, managing director of government agency Atieh it has been shut down after a new years (Persian New Year) message given by "supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei." . He said the government needed to spend money cautiously and cut costs during the global recession.

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