[p2p-research] Slashdot | Misadventures In Online Journalism

[Paul D. Fernhout]

http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/10/11/1439222/Misadventures-In-Online-Journalism
"Paul Carr, writing for TechCrunch, has posted his take on some of the flaws 
inherent to today's fast-paced news ecosystem, where bloggers often get 
little or no editorial feedback and interesting headlines are passed around 
faster than ever. His article was inspired by a recent story on ZDNet that 
accused Yahoo of sharing the names and emails of 200,000 users with the 
Iranian government; a report that turned out to be false, yet generated a 
great deal of outrage before it was disproved. Carr writes, 'Trusting the 
common sense of your writers is all well and good — but when it comes to 
breaking news, where journalistic adrenaline is at its highest and everyone 
is paranoid about being scooped by a competitor, that common sense can too 
easily become the first casualty. Journalists get caught up in the moment; 
we get excited and we post stupid crap from a foreign language student blog 
and call it news. And then within half a minute — bloggers being what they 
are — the news gets repeated and repeated until it becomes fact. Fact that 
can affect share prices or ruin lives. This is the reality of the 
blogosphere, where Churchill's remark: that "a lie gets halfway around the 
world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on" is more true, and 
more potentially damaging, than at any time in history.'"
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/10/witn-yahoo-didnt-sentence-200000-iranians-to-death-and-other-misadventures-in-online-journalism/
http://government.zdnet.com/?p=5547&tag=col1%3Bpost-5547

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/