One Real Journalist Disagrees with Another Real Journalist. News?
April 17, 2012
Recursive journalism has arrived. Gigaom takes on a legend in “Why Bob Woodward is Wrong About the Internet and Journalism.” It seems Woodward, of Woodward and Bernstein fame, believes the Internet can’t hold a candle to good old-fashioned journalism. He has stated:
“The truth of what goes on is not on the Internet. [The Internet] can supplement. It can help advance. But the truth resides with people. Human sources.”
Writer Mathew Ingram disagrees. He does sincerely give investigative journalism its due, citing Seymour Hersh’s recent report in the New Yorker on the U.S. government secretly training MEK fighters from Iran at a base in Nevada as a current example of its value. But he also treasures the collaboration made possible by the Web. As he points out, the Collateral Murder video might never have seen the light of day without the Internet.
Woodard, Ingram charges, yearns for the day when journalism was a solitary pursuit.
The article concludes:
“That view may be a lot more romantic, and it serves the purposes of journalists who see themselves as a special breed, with special powers that normal mortals don’t possess. It also serves the purposes of newspapers and other traditional media entities, which would like to be the sole source of all value in the media ecosystem. But it doesn’t really serve the purposes of journalism or society as a whole.”
Ouch. When real journalists collide, the result is recursive admiration. Is this real news?
Cynthia Murrell, April 17, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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