Online journalists:
Cowboys or Crooks?

- Christine van der Merwe

[ Afrikaans ]

"New Media in many ways is like the Wild West: There is no policing, no laws, and anything goes. But consumers don’t trust it, while New Media proponents wonder why. It is because consumers like order and reliability," says Walter Miller, weekly columnist until June this year for The Netly News (now Time Digital) - a website that covers the business, culture, technology and politics of New Media.

According to Miller, this freedom is the biggest challenge facing the New Media. Other journalists see it as a threat.

"You can publish stuff on the Web before there’s time to deny it, before there’s time to suppress it ... and before there’s time to fact check it," says Cass Brewer, senior editor and webmaster of Web Guide Monthly, a popular and authoritative American magazine. "From a journalist’s perspective, I see the Web, like pirate radio, as a way to subvert official methods of censorship. From a reader’s, I see it as a way to get information that might never make it into traditional media."
Brewer says the Web has made information plentiful and irrepressible. The problem is it can't be verified. Getting an accurate picture of a topic almost becomes a matter of majority rules.

"More than ten years after the Internet was spawned, the Web is still anarchistic, populated by a disproportionate percentage of pioneers, refugees of society, revolutionaries, outlaws, out-of-the-box thinkers, and fanatics," says Brewer. Everybody has an international audience  practically for free.

It seems, however, that government restrictions will not remain a vague threat indefinitely. Brewer says the only reason why the Web has been kept so free for so long is that many politicians are either technologically illiterate or downright technophobic.

Despite the Web’s emphasis on freedom of expression, big online news organisations censor themselves, says Geoff Harris, managing editor of Internet Titles in the UK. As in print media, people eventually sort out their information sources. Credibility is still important. People go to different websites for different reasons: for reliable news to organisations like The New York Times or CNN, and for the latest gossip: a cookie from the Drudge Report.

Matt Drudge, the former gift-shop assistant and brain behind the Drudge Report, has probably pioneerd a new journalistic norm for the 21st century: the truth is only a well-established rumour - the means don’t matter, as long as you get to the truth.

When he broke the Monica Lewinsky-scandal, Drudge notched one of the big scoops of the century. Michael Isikoff, a Newsweek journalist, had the original information. His editors didn't think the information was substantial enough, and they debated over the question of publishing mere allegations.  Once Drudge got hold of the information, he immediately put it on his website. Other publications then lifted the story from his site under the pretext of reporting "about the media." Within the traditional media, Drudge’s allegations would only have appeared  in a publication with little credibility or a low circulation. On the Internet his accusations are available to millions, and despite obvious flaws in his journalistic make-up, he became one of the media overnight. His website is visited by approximately 300 000 people daily.

The fame gained by Harry Knowles possibly proves ‘the geeks shall inherit the earth’. An everyday movie addict from Austin, Texas, Knowles gets secret information from hundreds of spies on film sets. From his bedroom, this 25-year-old’s opinion has a tremendous impact on Hollywood. Many box-office hits were grateful for the favourable publicity on Knowles’s site, which is visited by approximately 25 000 people a day. On the other hand, the failures of Speed 2 and Batman and Robin are largely blamed on the negative reaction it got from Knowles.

Bobson Wong of the Digital Freedom Network attributes this zero-to-hero phenomenon to the fact that speed and reach are the Internet’s greatest assets. At the same time they're also its greatest danger.

"News organisations eager to get the scoop are less careful about checking sources and printing hearsay, and more concerned about being the first to get the story ... the Internet makes rumours infinitely easier to spread."

The Digital Freedom Network circumvents government censorship and publishes material of censored authors. By publishing their work, DFN focuses international attention on serious human rights' violations and gives dissidents a direct voice to the world. The Chinese government has reportedly tried in vain to block their site.

Although the Internet is revolutionising the way people get information, the old media won’t be threatened by the new media anytime soon, feels Wong.

Pundits attribute die old media’s survival primarily to the fact that people can’t (or don’t want to) read electronic publications on the toilet. Trains, beds and fireplaces are apparently also going to make a humble contribution in securing the future of radio, television, newspapers and magazines.

The majority of the world population doesn’t have direct access to a telephone, says Wong. The New Media don’t really threaten the Old Media. Internet access is scarcely part of the vocabulary.

Lauren Beukes, acting editor of @home, a local lifestyle and technology-magazine, says the Internet has the potential to be the great equaliser - provided one doesn’t get lost in cyberspace. Oscar Wilde rightly said: "Modern journalism exists to keep us in touch with the ignorance of the community."

Noel Yavo of Woyaa! Internet Africa, a comprehensive website about Africa, believes Africa must get involved with the global Information Society voluntarily (unlike in the past when Africa was forced to participate in slavery and colonisation) and as soon as possible. Total exclusion is not an unrealistic prospect.

Journalists must also adapt. Waler Miller sees the New Media as a gift which we could easily use to slander and distort, and which we must therefore handle with circumspection. Many people think online journalism is a farce, because so many abuse it.

"The New Media has to be careful to use the benefits of the medium to improve journalism, not to make it worse all in the name of ‘free expression’."

We’re approaching a century in which the New Media will probably be dominant in developed countries. Journalists must master new techniques and maintain their integrity in the face of temptation. The writing is on the wall. In the words of Percy Bysshe Shelley: "The world’s great age begins anew ... The world is weary of the past."