Authors: Luvvie Ajayi
Someone unknowingly live-tweeted the assassination of Osama bin Laden when he posted a tweet saying he heard helicopters in the quiet town of Abbottabad, Pakistan. I've been on Twitter when numerous major events have happened, and each time, I am awed by how technology and the World Wide Web have made our possibilities for connection limitless. They expand our worlds, and they connect us to people all over the globe. I was there as a rescuer tweeted about heading out on a speedboat to help the people who were on a plane that crashed into the Hudson River. I remember exactly how I felt the moment I saw the tweet saying that Michael Jackson had died, and how comforting it was to share my grief with countless people who felt the gut punch just as hard as I did.
Social media has transformed our ways of communicating, and it has turned journalism on its head. I praise this aspect of the changed media landscape because at its most beautiful and useful, we get moments like my friend connecting with Richard in Haiti. The digital age has also allowed the rise of citizen journalists; people can tell stories that combat the false narratives spread by the mainstream media. You can live-tweet what is actually happening at a protest, so there's a different perspective from the tales of violence and mayhem on the nine o'clock news. You can write a blog post about the state of education in your district, so that when funding is cut, we have the stories of those who are actually affected. You can bring people along with you as you experience things firsthand. That is the awesome power of social media.
However, it's not all progress and nuance in the news. I am judging us for the way digital platforms have mutated how we report and engage with news and led to the dumbing down of our ideas and our critical thinking.
Everything about the news has shifted, from the way we consume it and report it to even the things that we deem worthy of reporting on. Social media and digital technology have changed the very business model of journalism. Where newspapers and magazines used to reign supreme, now they're threatened by our love of instant hot takes from blogs and digital outlets. For the record, I do not think print is going anywhere. Its presence might be reduced, but I cannot imagine it becoming obsolete. As the use of social media to spread and create news rose, though, publications were left scrambling and playing catch up. They should have been the ones at the forefront of the change, yet they were slow to evolve and, as a consequence, they had to follow the trend that was being set without them. But trends come and go. The traditional Big Media (with a big M), which I consider to be television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and their digital presences, should stand straight in the midst of these shifting trends. Instead, they're bending to the pressure.
I want journalism to get back to holding ethics in high regard again. Maybe it's the idealist in me; I like to keep hope alive. I understand that the traditional press is trying to compete by making sure they constantly stay on the pulse of things and report them as they happen. However, this means they are not taking the time to confirm stories, verify sources, and double-check facts. In the culture of “FIRST,” it is easy to fall into this trap, because if you aren't first, are you relevant? Yes, yes you are. I think so anyway. You might be behind the ball on breaking the news, but at least people can look to you for the truth.
Playing the game of “FIRST” is not serving us well because as outlets race to tweet and report, they are misreporting important facts, credibility be damned. Too many formerly stalwart publications are rushing and end up getting the stories wrong.
That can't be how it works.
Our media is supposed to be a trustworthy and reliable observer of society, feeding us information on happenings objectively and accurately. However, that is more of an ideal than a reality, and that is why the lack of real journalistic ethics and the speed of dissemination on social media have twisted things so thoroughly. The media is supposed to be the gatekeeper of information, and how they mold it and report it absolutely affects how we consume it and react to it. The increasingly loud failures of traditional press in the era of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram make me want to just slide off my chair.
Historically, journalists have not been as objective as they could be. Try as they may (and sometimes they do not try at all), their personal biases color their reporting. But these days it's not just biases coloring things, it's the new world of immediate feedback and instant news. The twenty-four-hour news cycle is keeping us in the know, but it is also spreading ignorance through underdeveloped thought and coverage.
Because many breaking news stories now start with a random person sending out a seemingly innocuous tweet, we're turning less and less to traditional sources to get the information we need. The press tries to counteract this by trying to be constantly in the know. When they jump to conclusions that later prove to be wrong, we tell them to do better research. But when they take an hour and a half to confirm that a major celebrity died when that celebrity's friend already tweeted out a confirmation, we also send major side-eye their way. So we're stuck in a cycle of impatience which gets us quick information that is not always quality information. Dambit.
Not only is this demand for instant news gratification careless, it's also dangerous: for example, when a shooting happens and the press tweets pictures of the supposed suspect without confirmation. One too many times, they've been wrong, and the person whose photo is now all over the Internet ends up not being the culprit. Instantly, they've ruined an innocent person's life because they did not do their jobs properly. Reporting publicly on guesses instead of confirmed reports is rookie behavior, but now professionals are doing it constantly. What happens when they realize they were wrong? They make meek and quiet apologies that no one pays attention to. By that point, people have already run with the falsities, because perception is usually more important than the actual truth. As the old saying goes: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
I would prefer a later truth than a quicker lie.
Rumors start from whispers in the air and sources that are not reliable, someone's cousin's uncle's sister who had heard from her niece that something happened. When a media outlet that should know better reports something that is not true, we gotta call them to the table to ask where they got it from. You know what kills me softly? The fact that major news outlets who are supposed to be reputable are now not only dropping the ball on doing their own due diligence but placing their trust in smaller, less proven outlets. I saw a major outlet publish an entire article on their website based on a rumor reported by a website that had a “satire” disclaimer at the bottom. Who the hell are we supposed to look to for truth if the people who are supposed to be professionally responsible for providing it are failing so badly? It's one thing for an everyday person who did not go to journalism school or hasn't spent the last seven years in a newsroom to fall for some of these websites. It's another, more hopeless thing when folks who consider themselves to be journalists fall for the okeydoke. If they don't know better, how are the rest of us supposed to? LAWD.
Also, the prevalence of satirical websites makes me want to slice up my cuticles right before I paint my nails. The word “satire,” it seems, no longer means lampooning the truth for comedic purposes and making the world look at its absurdity in the mirror. Satire now means “Let me just make up some shit and post it to the Internet.” “Satire” and “straight-up lies” are not supposed to be synonymous. This is what happens when your comedy lacks intelligence. It makes me stabby and ragey, and I want to shot-put everyone who isn't
The Onion
. On a list of “Things I Hate Intensely,” these busted sites will come in above Spirit Airlines, kale, and yellow Starburst. I wish a thousand crashed servers on each of them. They've made the line between satire and defamation far too thinâyou cannot just slap the satire label on anything and go “TA-DA!” I hate it so much.
On the other side of this fake-ass coin, people gotta quit believing everything they see on the Internet. I'd like to quote Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, “Everything on the Internet is not true.”
Dr. King was so wise. Just because a statement is in a nifty-looking meme or superimposed on a picture of someone staring at the sunset affectingly does not mean it should be taken as truth. At least once a day I have to tell my Facebook friends that something they posted and are outraged about is fake news. It's my contribution to humanity, since everyone seems kinda slow now.
Everyone
. It crosses lines of class, gender, education, and ethnicity. It is the great equalizer. It's like critical thinking has gone on permanent vacation since social media has dumbed down our ability to receive and analyze information. There are PhDs believing that a site with the URL
www.nytimesco.net
is actual factual. Pay attention! Jeebus be the fence of discernment around our proverbial sense houses, because we are outchea failing at media literacy.
That celebrity died three years ago, so your RIPs are late and I'm side-eying the hell out of you. No, that white actor is not playing Bob Marley in a new biopic. And no, that Black power couple is not funding a terrorism organization. While I'm here, forwarding that e-mail to twenty people will not mean Bill Gates will PayPal you $30.75. Why must I facepalm so hard? Why do we have to be so gullible in the worst ways? It's all a hot-ass mess.
This little drama plays out across my social-media platforms multiple times a week, where some ridiculous rumor is spreading, aided by someone reputable or “smart” passing it along as fact. The worst part is always how easy it is to debunk. People act like Google went on break and said it'd be back never. It is so frustrating. We have all this information at our fingertips, but we skip over it in favor of reacting quickly, being first, and starting conversation, even around false facts.
Across the board, I have to say that consuming news has become an exercise in “Should I believe this?” now more than ever. We have always been lied to by major mediaâpropaganda is an ever-present part of the press, and this is why we all need to be careful about the messages that are being amplified and how they're being twisted and given new context. We have to stay curious. But now things seem worse than ever. Half the battle is finding out what is happening in the world, and the other half is doing our own research to know what is real, what is half-truth, and what are flat-out lies. I hate that the lies are taking up so much space. When Tammy from Arkansas is posting bullshit on her blog, that is one thing, but when a major media outlet is using the same nonsense to get visitors online, then you know we are stooping to new lows. Who needs accuracy and journalistic integrity when you can have a lot of clicks?
It feels like we're constantly trying to use cheat codes for this news game. I'm sick of this clickbait custom where we're being tricked to take in news by any means necessary. One way people do this is by creating salacious headlines for articles that only exist to pique our curiosity so that we click on them. Reputable publications and blogs alike use misleading headlines to get visitors, and it tap dances on my last nerve. We don't trust ourselves enough to come up with interesting stuff without having to trick people, and we don't trust people to click unless it's trashy, shady, and wanton. Sheesh.
Our headlines have gotten more and more deceptive, and it is leading us astray. Your success as a writer is no longer measured by how good your article is but by how many page views you got. The perpetual clickbait trap of headlines about folks doing tacky things is disingenuous at best. When people do land on the website to read whatever dirt they think they're getting, they often find a much tamer article than they expected. Trick me once, shame on you. Trick me twice, shame on me. So while sites that do this might get a spike in traffic, they will constantly be in need of new readers, because the next time their work comes across any of my feeds, I will know it's garbage and I will not be entertaining it. We've turned the damb Internet and our news into eCanal Streetâcounterfeits and knock-offs flooding the market and drowning out real work.
And even the non-disingenuous content is questionable at best. The world is falling apart at its seams, and a news telecast will spend ten minutes talking about the celebrities who had Twitter beef and two minutes on the wildfires ravaging the state of California. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THE NEWS, NOT A GOSSIP RAG. I cannot even, so I'll just odd.
I know the general public likes levity, and sometimes we need an escape, but can you give us the fluff along with some substance? It's like allowing the child who hates vegetables to eat candy as their main entrée for dinner every week. You are supposed to sit there and tell them to deal with that broccoli before they can have cake. Instead, the media willingly lets us go on garbage news benders. Maybe they shouldn't even try to cover the substantive stuff, because they surely do not know how to act when they do. Watch Fox News as they report on anything race-, sex-, or politics-related and you'll realize that our “gatekeepers” are failing with flying colors. They are like the opposite of “The More You Know.”
We really do get stuck in these dreadful cycles, because some talking head will say something repulsive and so offensive that you can taste the bitterness in your own mouth. Social media then explodes with everyone gasping in disbelief because of whatever nonsensical crap was uttered on national (and international) television. Our attention is captivated for days as that person goes on a press tour, doubling down on their dumbassery, reveling in their notoriety as a trending topic. Some of them get book deals, some get reality TV shows, and some increase their lead in the polls about who should become president. Do we sit around and watch people go uncorrected in their bullshit, or do we continue to feed the outrage machine that keeps them in the spotlight? It's hard to figure out what to do, but one thing is sure: people are prospering from being unapologetically offensive, trite, and stupid. And we are tweeting ourselves into high blood pressure and ulcers trying to tell them to do better. All I know is that it is feeding our lowest-common-denominator news loop, and it is officially a beast. Being a pompous nut biscuit is now a publicity strategy, and I don't know what we can do to end the madness.