Post-modernist journalism
I was talking to a sociologist friend of mine about journalism. We thought of a way to modify Jay Rosen’s basketball game anology.
Rosen’s example of journalism says that issues and stories are often like a basketball game with multiple people watching from multiple perspectives. The journalist goes around and sits with people, to view the game from their perspective then writes from those various perspectives. This eliminates the idea of absolute “Truth” because everything is slightly different.
It also makes news coverage based on reader interaction and perspective not from the journalist’s perspective. But in the end, the journalist is credible and observations are checked and verified.
Aaron said the massive complexity of society and sheer number of “information sources” makes it impossible for individuals to know “Truth” and instead have to create truth (lowercased) based on a multi-faceted view. The basketball game occurred, the game event itself is True, our descriptions of it are true. Rosen would agree and so do I.
In the basketball game model, citizen journalists all saw the game differently and the professional journalist must verify what is real. One person may have seen Michael Jordan score 5 points while another might have seen Larry Bird make 5 points (I don’t follow basketball, sorry for the old references). In the end the final score was still 5 points, but who made it? The professional journalist must mine information and perspectives to find out which player made those points.
It’s irresponsible to publish both perspectives if the total score is 5 and not 10. Although many journalists think remaining objective would be to publish both of these accounts of the game (game = political sphere, obviously you’re not going to post an inaccurate sports score).
Journalism, then, becomes credible by multiplication, verification and analysis – the analysis being key.
This isn’t much different than what we already do. Instead of just fact checking documents and quotes for accuracy, we’re fact checking observations and perspectives for credibility.
Then, in one sense citizen journalists and bloggers are dangerous and damaging because they interrupt the flow and consistency of professional journalism work. In another sense, they keep us accountable. The are the Fifth Estate (oh dear) by forcing professional journalists to compete and to constantly serve as the top source.