Social
media has allowed everyday citizens to become authors, editors, and publishers
of news and information. Do you believe that social media has increased the
quality of news and information or decreased it?
With the increase
of citizen journalism in social media I feel that quality of news and
information has decreased. Yes you can hear about something as soon as it
happens but is what you read always correct? Of course it’s not. It is always
distorted. Yes it has some truth to it but the facts are not always correct.
For example, I just received a phone call from a friend of mine who informed me
that there was a man beaten to death during the Hedley concert in Dawson’s
Creek BC. It was all over the Hedley Facebook page. Fans were adding comments
informing everyone what happened and every story was different. The only thing
that every post had in common was that there was a man who had passed away. I
of course was curious as to what exactly happened so I went to the internet and
located a few articles by actual reporters and read them. Yes in fact there was
a man who passed away on the same day at the Hedley concert and yes he did
attend the Hedley concert but he did not die at the concert. He passed away at
the hospital from his injuries. If I had taken the Facebook posts as actual
news, I would have believed he was beaten to death and found dead in the
bathroom of the Hedley concert. This is clearly close to the truth but it is
not the truth. Yes I did find out about
the unfortunate death of a young man who attended the Hedley concert in
Dawson’s Creek BC before it was reported from traditional news mediums. But it
was not as accurate of a report as that of the traditional news reporters. Social Media has yes increased the speed in
which we are able to hear about things that happen in our world but speed is
not accuracy!
References:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/man-beaten-to-death-during-hedley-concert-in-bc/article2339458/
