Marty Baron once mentioned about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in his Oweida Lecture. Occurred in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012, Adam Lanza killed his mother at home and then drove to the school and shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members. Adam committed suicide afterwards. With the abundant flow of information full of errors and mistakes spreading among the news media, Baron said part of the public generally saw it as a “fabricated story with actors.” Later on, when more stories, written by professors and some conspiracy theorists, appeared, the news media was accused of involving government cover-up conspiracy. It brings up two main issues – how journalists should tackle with information, especially from online source and social media, in crisis news, and how to deal with public accusation on news media.
The case appeared as a crisis news, which is understandable that some errors could be made because journalists have to balance between speed and accuracy in reporting. “Errors are regularly observed and critiqued. Yet, press is necessary because there will be no true democracy without free press,” said Baron during the lecture. However, it is still worth noting that these mistakes can also bring the media credibility into question, just like how the public reacted to Sandy Hook shooting at first. Sherrick suggested several surveys were done to prove people’s opinions are more influenced by media than were their actual own views – the third-person perception (Sherrick, 2016). Now given that the online media is so easily accessible, people generally lose their intentions to do fact checks. The increased reliance on social media does not just apply to the general public, but also to how journalist gather information and sources. As Baron said, “journalists need to look for evidence and fairly examine them. What are the facts? Are there weaknesses? But never about what you believe or your feel to be true.” Journalist simply should not just believe in what the online media said and report assumptions on what actually happened. While these assumptions can make up truthy-sound stories, which is possibly good for the news companies because they could gain attentions and possibly more sales, it is unethical because it betrays the moral purpose of the profession. In crisis, public officials and the eyewitnesses of the incident are believed to be the most expected of sources (Berkowitz, & Liu, 2014). Reaching them instead of just twitting something factually wrong is probably the better option.
As for the public accusation on the media, like how conspiracy were said to be involved in the Sandy Hook case, Baron suggested something quite strong, not in response to this specific case, but to the profession in general – As long as journalists have done their moral duty, are honest, honorable, forthright, and independent without betraying the purpose of the profession, audience, and public, which is to report accurate and truthful stories, and can defend their decisions, they do not have to worry and care too much about how people see and comment on them. It is generally true because the public is always dissatisfied with the media, but no one can judge when the press is doing what it should do as this is the nature of how journalism to be – to report facts that benefit the public interest. Specifically in this shooting case, Berkowitz and Liu suggested a slightly different but clever approach to deal with these malicious accusations – “discrediting the discreditor” (Berkowitz, & Liu, 2014). James Tracy, a former professor at Florida Atlantic University, has suggested the shooting either did not occur or there actually were political motives for coverup. Media authority was seriously accused. However, with facts, the media “discredited Tracy’s research achievements so that his discrediting of journalistic authority could, in turn, be discredited and lumped him together with other conspiracy theorists (Berkowitz, & Liu, 2014).” While some may argue this method as unethical because a journalist should not use his job to attack someone’s opinion, I believe this is also how the media can defend themselves using their regular jobs to report facts because it is also important to inform the public of these misleading or even wrong opinions to avoid wrong public understanding of the whole case and at the same time can prevent from malicious comments that might hurt the profession as a whole.
The lecture from Baron talked about some of the journalistic problems that probably every journalist would go through and he strengthened how important journalism is in this information era and in a democratic world with rights practiced. Mistakes are inevitable, but it does not mean journalists can use this as an excuse to make fabricated stories. Journalism, if done ethically right, is not something that can be ashamed just because of the public’s, or even the president’s devilish comment, but a moral profession that serves the public interest. It is the profession that requires journalists to stand up, where shut up is never the correct moral answer, as what Baron emphasized so many times in his lecture.
Reference
Sherrick, B. (2016). The Effects of Media Effects: Third-Person Effects, the Influence of Presumed Media Influence, and Evaluations of Media Companies. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 93(4), 906-922. doi:10.1177/1077699016637108
Berkowitz, D., & Liu, Z. M. (2014). Media errors and the ‘nutty professor’: Riding the journalistic boundaries of the Sandy Hook shootings. Journalism, 17(2), 155-172. doi:10.1177/1464884914552266