Lecture 10: The Internet
Internet is a dangerous mix of trustworthy and untrustworthy source material. It's often hard to tell the difference between a legitimate web site and an amateur site riddled with inaccuracies.
Basic rule: can the source be identified and, if possible, contacted?
Easy for someone with a particular agenda to trick the Internet user into thinking his web site is legitimate and unbiased. Eg. The Drudge Report. A conservatively biased amateur journalist who nonetheless provides useful hyperlinks to other news sites from his web page.
Objectivity and ethics are less important in cyberspace. too many small web sites with overt agendas. it wasn't set up to separate web sites according to accuracy or professionalism.
entrapment or active deception is an easy journalistic technique to use on the net, but the same ethical problems apply here as in other instances where it has been used to get a story.
Conducting interviews with sources online is also ethically problematic. They have the time and opportunity to think carefully about the answer, even have somebody else answer their questions.
It is, however, a good way to get publicity-shy sources to talk.
plagiarism: biggest ethical risk of the Internet. Particularly tempting at major newspapers with their heavy workloads and tight deadlines.
Inadvertent plagiarism is a common problem when journalists toggle quickly between an online source and their story on the same screen.
Easier to uncover plagiarism online because of the speed and flexibility of search engines such as google.com. Typing in a pattern of keywords will usually uncover a source.
Newspapers have found the Internet is a difficult forum to make money. Advertisers are reluctant to pay if newspapers can't prove a "hit" is really a reader. And readers are reluctant to pay for online papers.
Possible future technology: custom-made online paper.
Traditional papers are still more effective than web papers at making people browse and read things they didn't intend to.