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Is your BS detector optimized to deal with the new realities of democratic media?

It’s become a truism that we’re all media creators now, from bloggers and podcasters to the most wet-behind-the-feathers Twitterer.

Along with the new freedom to create comes more responsibility: The new media ecosystem places an increased burden on all of us to become more perceptive consumers and dissectors of media. In the age of We Media, it’s important that we be able to discern fact from fiction, to separate reportage from speculation and to not become unwitting participants in the latest spam scam.

In short, we need to sharpen our online media smarts.

A couple of years ago I was tempted to write a book called “But I Heard It on the Internet!,” but Farhad Manjoo’s book, “True Enough, Living in a Post-Fact Society” beat me to the punch. Like many of us, Manjoo bemoans a society where anything can be accepted as true if it’s said loudly enough, repeated often enough and circulated widely on the Internet. We’ve become so lacking in basic media literacy skills that an entire segment of our population believes whatever its cultural leaders tell them to, facts be damned.

Every day, when we take a ride on our favorite search engines or tune in to our favorite news sites, we seem confident that we know how to spot the good stuff and weed out the nonsense. But do we?

Here’s a guide to help you optimize your BS detector to deal with the new realities of democratic media.

1. Give your trust to sources that earn it

Just as print newspapers run the gamut from tabloid sleaze to the New York Times, so too you can find any flavor of news, from celebrity sleaze to public service journalism, in the online arena.

What’s changed in recent years is that we no longer rely just on traditional media brands for our news diet. Individual bloggers, hyperlocal news sites and alternative media publications now command a good deal of our mindshare. Before you give your attention and retweets to the newcomers, ask:

• Do I know who’s behind this site, or are they hiding behind a cloak of anonymity? Use easywhois.com to find out who owns the domain if there’s no author listed.

• Has the site been around for a while? Alexa will tell you.

• Is there a way for users to leave comments on the site or communicate with the producer?

• Does the news source link to materials that authenticate his report?

• Does the source have a presence on Twitter?

• Are other users linking to the site? Check on Technorati for the site’s “link authority.”

Even generally reliable information sources on the Web aren’t wholly reliable. For instance, just because it’s on Wikipedia doesn’t make it true, as I learned first-hand from people like Forrest Sawyer, who told me his Wikipedia entry is riddled with errors. Don’t take entries at face value — follow the source material to see if it adds up.

What’s important is not whether news or information outlets occasionally slip up –- we all do –- but whether they have mechanisms in place to prevent and correct mistakes. In other words, minor blips notwithstanding, are they earning our trust?

2. Get out of your bubble

A generation ago, Walter Cronkite said that an informed citizen needs to check multiple stories from multiple locations rather than rely on a single news source, whether it’s the New York Times or CBS News. His advice resonates even more strongly today with the rise of hyper-partisan media from the right and the left.

Avoid the media echo chamber, which exposes you to only a narrow prism of views and discourse. A good way to burst your isolation bubble: Broaden your online diet by bookmarking overseas news sites.

Good choices include BBC.co.uk, the Guardian, Finland’s Helsingin Sanomat, Israel’s Haaretz, Australia’s News.com or the Australian Broadcasting Company. Read opposing points of view. Use a news reader to subscribe to a search term like “health care reform” or “Afghanistan war” to funnel in an even more diverse range of coverage. Continue reading →

Anthony Edwards of “ER” fame did his first tweet — to raise funds for the first children’s pediatric training hospital in Africa.

Bloggers, journalism, celebrities and what the future holds

There was a little bit of a SXSW vibe at the just-ended Blogworld Expo in Las Vegas — a communal feeling where the goings-on in the sessions (on the whole, consistently engaging) were overshadowed by the face time and first-time encounters between longtime Twitter friends. To be sure, BlogWorld is a smaller affair than SouthBy — one official told me 1,500 people turned out for the Causes/Activism track on Thursday, 5,000 for the next two days — but from my vantage point, it seems that the social media phenomenon has rejuvenated ones of the world’s oldest and largest new media gatherings.

Twitter was front and center throughout the affair, both on screen — where rolling tweets of each session’s hashtags were displayed (though not consistently) — and as a way for conference-goers to figure out evening social plans. And cameras and recorders were everwhere — here’s my Flickr set of BlogWorld.

Below is a recap of the highlights in my field of vision (see after the jump). In addition, I just posted 8 tips for raising funds online — a recap of the Tools for Nonprofits panel that I moderated at Blogworld — over at our sister site, Socialbrite.org.

Journalists vs. bloggers: Can we please move on?

As regular readers know, I’ve been blogging about journalism, blogging, and the need for journalists and bloggers to love each other and use the best elements of both worlds since 2001, when I started this blog (then called New Media Musings). See, for example, Blogs and Journalism Need Each Other in Harvard’s Nieman Reports in Fall 2003.

So it’s now irritating, and not merely tiresome, to attend a new media conference where too many of the sessions veered into hostility toward traditional news organizations. The audience questions to and reaction to CNN weekend anchor Don Lemon (below), was a case in point.

Why should bloggers want to work with CNN? Lemon should have more artfully worded his reply — “The plain truth is that my platform is bigger than your platform” — but, with the exception of a few outliers like iJustine or cross-over Twitter celebrities, that’s still true. It’s not about CNN, it’s about reach and bringing value to more people.

The notion that crowdsourced amateur journalism can supplant professional journalism, and actually do a better job — which many in the audience truly believe — is not only ludicrous but potentially dangerous to our democratic institutions. Journalism that ferrets out corruption, that takes the pulse of a community, that sheds a light on international events is hard work, something that the crowd tends to avoid. Just ask anyone toiling in overworked, understaffed independent journalism publications like Spot.us, AliveinBaghdad, Pro Publica, or the just-launched Oakland Local.

Similarly, I’ve finally found a fundamental disagreement with my friend, colleague and fellow Traveling Geek Robert Scoble. I tweeted my dismay at the bottom-line premise of his panel, How Social Media Is Changing the Definition of News: that news sites should pass along rumors and second-hand reports without fact-checking them. “The old world was i fact-checked before I published, in this new world i can correct it after the fact,” Scoble said.

Immediately after the panel, he cited TMZ’s early report on the death of Michael Jackson and the fact that no one remembers who reported it second. “It’s over. It’s over,” he told me, referring to journalism’s authentication function. Continue reading →