Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion
as we know how they are made.
~ John Godfrey Saxe (2 June 1816 – 31 March 1887)
This past Saturday, those of us who were on Twitter, following news of the Tuscon Shooting, quite literally, got to see the “journalism sausage” being made. While public displays of journalism have been tweeted before, I’m not sure that they’ve been quite so “public” or “visible”. ((This has more to do with the nature of the story being covered. This event was/is a sort of socio-cultural “perfect storm”, if you will (something I hope to write about later).)) I suspect that the first 12 hours of reportage on the shooting are going to be looked back upon, for various reasons and different aims, as an important moment in the ongoing transformation of journalism within the US.
One thing that backs up that belief is how a foundational figure in modern American Journalism, Walter Cronkite, has been invoked to help frame and understand how the coverage unfolded.
More than a year ago, techcrunch writer MG Siegler made the claim that “In the age of realtime, Twitter is Walter Cronkite” arguing that, as tools that allow for realtime reporting increase, we will increasingly turn to these networked information channels for news as it breaks:
[R]ight now, Twitter, the brand, is the winning channel for this new type of news consumption. It’s the Walter Cronkite for realtime information. And when the next major event happens, an increasing number of us will be huddled around our computer screens, watching. And even more the time after that…
Following Siegler’s prediction, when news of the shooting hit, people did turn to Twitter to get updates and to discuss/debate the event as it unfolded. The result was a flurry of chaotic activity, simultaneously full of brilliance, outrage, worry, and sympathy, accurate and inaccurate information.
On Sunday, concerned with the amount of incorrect information that was reported, circulated, sourced, and amplified off of Twitter ((For an excellent curated view of incorrect information reported by major media outlets see Regret the Error’s Craig Silverman’s exhaustive compilation of misstatements.)), Chad Catacchio, posted a rebuttal to Siegler. Catacchio argues that “Twitter isn’t the new Cronkite – it needs the new Cronkite(s)” that, in the face of uncertainty, some restraint needs to be practiced, and that the reports need to be sorted through some means that promotes/amplifies/delivers the most accurate information. ((See Dan Gillmore’s Salon essay, Arizona shootings: Take a slow-news approach, for another good take on the need for reflection in the realtime coverage of events.))
In reflecting on what I observed on Saturday, I can’t help but wonder if this search for Cronkite (much likeof waiting for Godot) is a futile action, and misses the scope of what was playing out on Twitter.
In 1963, what America saw via broadcast media, was the end product of journalism: Cronkite interpreting of information from various sources announces that Kennedy had been shot.
Two days ago, those of us on Twitter saw far more than that. We saw all (or at least something close to all) aspects of journalism being conducted; we saw the sausage being made in realtime.
By my count, at least five things were happening all at once on Twitter:
- Reporting — Same as Cronkite, information was shared about what people understood to be true.
- Amplification — Retweeting. People were sharing information with their networks, often trying to draw attention to specific facts, questions, and ideas that they felt were the most important to the unfolding situation.
- Commentary and Discussion — At the same time, people were actively discussing/disputing the facts of the shooting (often working to weave the shooting to various, grander socio-political narratives) and expressing concern for parties involved.
Ok, so far, nothing particularly out of the ordinary. This isn’t the first time these activities have occurred around a breaking event on Twitter (and for that matter on blogs prior to the advent of Twitter). It’s the final two categories that I think are particularly of note:
- “Acts of Journalism” — Twitter was used to publicly interview people in real time, crowdsource information and confirmation. In these cases, we (the non-journalism public) got to see the actual process of journalism enacted, not just the results (a la Cronkite bringing us the news). Note, that these acts are not necessarily performed by traditional “reporters.”
- Meta-Commentary and Meta-Discussion — Along all of this, we also saw a number of people involved with journalism publicly commenting, via Twitter, on how the coverage of the event was unfolding both on Twitter and across the other forms of reportage going on.
In future posts that follow, I’m going to try and trace out categories four and five, showing how examples of each unfolded. For the moment though, in trying avoid TLDR ((Too long, didn’t read)), I just want consider why I think attention has to be paid to these last two categories of action.
For Cronkite, the medium (one-to-many broadcast) and the conventions of what he was doing (news anchor), meant that his voice was the only immediately present in the broadcast. These factors also gave him the luxury of having time to sort, decide, and reflect.
What we saw on Saturday was an example of, following Joshua Meyrowitz’s arguments in No Sense of Place, how, at least on Twitter, the medium not only encourages realtime reporting, but greatly increase the parts of the process that we, the public-at-large see (and participate in) — traditionally hidden backstage work (investigation, checking sources, editing, writing) was folded into the traditionally public frontstage performance (reporting of information).
On Twitter, for structural/programmatic reasons, acts of journalism cannot be concealed in traditional ways. You can’t have a private conversation on Twitter unless both people are following each other. So, for example, when Caitie Parker (@caitieparker) revealed via Twitter that she had known the shooter in High School, the only way she could be contacted on twitter was via the use of the public “mention” (@) protocol. ((For additional background on this see, NYC The Blog’s curation of various media outlet’s public requests via Twitter for interviews with Parker.)) Thus, the initial interview conducted with Parker happened on Twitter, in public, in real time. And, in addition to being amplified via retweets and mentions within other media, the interview was also immediate parsed on a “meta-level” by individuals looking to politically frame both Parker’s answers about Loughner and and the questions of her interviewer, Anthony De Rosa (@antderosa).((Of the course of a few hours De Rosa would be simultaneously accused of both liberal and conservative bias by those who came directly across his feed or retweets from it)) All of this, interview, reporting, amplification, debate, and meta-debate took place publicly, in real time (and is also archived as part of Twitter’s public record). ((It’s my hope to “deep dive” into De Rosa’s acts of journalism, and in particular this interview, in a future post)).
Returning to the debate between Siegler and Catacchio about Twitter and Cronkite, it seems that the real question is not if Twitter is Cronkite, or if we need Cronkites on Twitter. Rather, I think it is the case that on platforms like Twitter, where a specific notion/value of “ immediate publicness” is hard-coded into the functionality, the possibility of the practice of Cronkitesque journalism/authority has been all but eliminated. I suspect that it impossible to use Twitter to cover an unfolding event without exposing the sausage making process. And, as Saxe points out in the above quote, that act of exposure undermines traditional ideas of authority.
The hopes of finding/creating a new Cronkite seems to contain within them the hope that at some point, individuals involved with journalism can reestablish (demarcate) public/private boundaries for their practice. The question I wonder is when/if the platforms that are being used to conduct journalism will stabilize enough to allow such a boundary to be erected. And if not, then who might become the new ideal?
Thanks for writing this thoughtful piece. To parse #5 further, if I may, I would note that some people I follow online engaged in extensive commentary in isolation from mainstream media – i.e., speaking among themselves and within their own online communities – specifically on the point that MSM did not identify Loughner as a terrorist, and the question of whether they would have done so had he been Islamic. I am waiting to see if this issue bubbles up into the MSM, but I’m not holding my breath.
Elwin,
Thanks for the comments. In a future post, I’m hoping to touch base a couple threads/questions in your reply as I think trying to understand how it was framed, what was asked and not asked, and how/why the on-time news reporting took place on twitter, are very important to thinking about why I think this will be seen in the future as an important “moment” for journalism.
Two questions for you (if you don’t mind…):
(1) When you say MSM (Main Stream Media), I was wondering what outlets you are specifically including (and excluding). Loose definitions would be fine.
(2)You wrote: “People I follow online engaged in extensive commentary in isolation from mainstream media” – Would you mind expanding on what you mean by “isolation”? Do you mean, for example, via blogs or invite only/password protected discussion groups or Internet chat? Or was some of that happening on Twitter? If so were those folks using any hash tags?
1- very loosely, using MSM to include major newspapers and network/cable TV news and exclude “social media.”
2- Isolation = incorporating observations about MSM, but not visibly attempting to engage them; specifically, I saw folks on Facebook critiquing MSM. A couple of decades they might have written letters to the editor. Now they self-publish on Facebook, engaging their own audiences.
Thanks for the clarification. That’s really helpful. Quick thought on point #1, the topic of coverage of “if” terrorist was briefly addressed on some morning shows, in particular on FoxNews… That said, the framing of the conversation might not match what you were seeing in your community.
The question of engagement and where it takes place is a really interesting one as well.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for sharing! I had fruitful discussions in both of my classes (Law & Ethics of the Press and the History of Journalism).
A few scattered thoughts:
I totally agree that looking for Cronkite is futile. He was a brand – or a friend. For example, he was behind the story on Vietnam. Maybe people are searching for the trust and dignity associated with Cronkite? Even more than transparency?
I like point #4. What comes to mind are recent discussions about a federal shield law. One school of thought suggests rather than defining who is a journalist, we should protect those that “do” journalism. Expanding the definition to twitter is interesting and thought provoking. I’ll mull it over….
Finally, you may have seen this already, but here is a post from Poynter about correcting tweets. Note how one reporter left an incorrect tweet rather than delete it. Instead he used follow-up tweets to clarify.
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/113876/conflicting-reports-of-giffords-death-were-understandable-but-not-excusable/
The concept of “acts of journalism” is one of the “big ideas” that I’ve recently been exposed to (via Dan Gillmore). I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about that, in terms of ideas about institutions versus assemblages and notions of “modernity.” Basically how this turn towards “acts of journalism” creates lots of problems in a society/culture that has spent the last century (if not since roughly the civil war) optimizing its operation for bureaucratic institutions. Shield laws are one example of things that are designed to protect Journalists rather than “Acts of Journalism.”
A post later this week should really start to tackle that issue…
Yes! I completely agree. And I’m not so sure that this is a bad thing, per se. As a journalism professor, I teach my students that accuracy is the MOST important thing they will ever do. But is allowing the public to watch and participate in this verification process a bad thing, at least in breaking news situations like this? I know many would argue that it is, but I’m not sure I agree, and I think that opening up the process in some ways ensures that the larger truth will come out. There is also something somewhat patronizing about suggesting that only journalists are able to witness that backstage sausage-making process, and that letting it out in the public should cause irreparable harm. Ultimately, it’s about transparency and media literacy – people need to understand when they are looking at a fully vetted fact and when they are looking at a fact in the process of vetting.
Really great points. And at this point, I’m more interested in tracing the outlines of this debate than taking a side.
I’m planning to incorporate this question into a future post. But one thing that I want to immediately note is that the nature of the Twitter platform is such that it enables more than just witnessing. It allows participation in terms of commenting on the reporting process as it is taking place. And to some degree, there is an expectation of a two way interaction. So, as I’ll write about, at the same time people like De Rosa were conducting on Twitter interviews, other users were parsing their interviews for bias (left and right wing btw) and using the “@”‘s to “call out” the reporter, if you will.
I’m not sure what to make of that, yet. But it definitely seems to complicate the equation.
The good folks over at Lost Remote put up a great post tracking the spread of inaccuracies on Twitter regarding the Tucson violence. They reached much the same conclusion you did concerning the nature of the medium , ultimately quoting Mark Hamilton’s tweet that there was “Lots of error in media, Twitter but remember, following breaking news is a continuing effort, not a one-shot-now-I-know effort.” In other words, some literacy and restraint is required of the audience in terms of how quickly they buy into new information if they are to get the full benefit of Twitter as a news channel.
I’ve heard similar observations in my interview research with online journalists, who’ve said that it’s not just journalists, but users whose digital literacy must improve in order for positive interactions to happen online that add value to the public sphere. I think there are a lot of contexts in which that’s true; I wouldn’t necessarily put a normative spin on it by saying that users’ literacies should to improve. Rather, I think that over time they will—and news organizations are getting better at constructively engaging their users, as well as at filtering their feedback so as to encourage specific types of editorially valuable contributions. In other words, they’re now selecting for higher digital literacy on the part of their audiences.
The one observation you’ve made that I disagree with somewhat is that there’s no stage management available to journalists using Twitter. On the contrary, I think (and have written: PDF) that journalists are very aware of the public nature of Twitter and treat it consciously as they would a live mic. As is usual, these norms become explicit when we see them breached. In short, there’s a lot of stage management that goes on on Twitter. At best, I’d say there are special cases, like the “unfolding events” you point to, in which stage management breaks down or becomes impossible there, but that’s different from saying it doesn’t exist on Twitter.
Totally agree. That’s where I turn to Meyrowitz’s work (i.e. “No Sense of Place” for a solid model of how that change occurs).
Definitely didn’t mean to suggest that stage management doesn’t happen on Twitter. The idea that, at a moment of “crisis/unfolding event,” normal rules of stage management break down, I think is a really productive angle to consider this from.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Andy Carvin. Andy Carvin said: Well worth a read. rt @mattbernius: Thoughts on Saturday: on twitter journalism, cronkite, and sausage making – http://bit.ly/hhoRLl […]
Thanks for the feedback, Matt! Really great post. I rec’d it on Nieman Lab, which is also covering this today. Hope you’ll join the new Carnival of Journalism, by the way. I’m excited for it.
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