“We Media and “Me” Media: Toward a New Credibility

Burke and the Blogosphere: Toward a New Credibility

Credibility Crisis: Leading Mainstream News Media Out of the Woods

Key terms: credibility, blogs, flogs, blogosphere, journalism, news media, old media, traditional media, media elites, legacy media, rhetoric, identification, transparency, authenticity, immediacy, sincerity, reactionary, news commodification, heterotopia, human voices, goodwill, objectivity, persuasion, fidelity, integrity

Starting point: Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics

Paper as justification for moving (back) to the rhetorical, the individual, the persuasive.

Set-up:
There is a credibility crisis in journalism. A perfect storm combining journalistic malpractice (Jayson Blair, Michael Kelley, Judith Miller, Dan Rather, Newsweek), increasingly empowered readers (instant feedback loop, democratization of Internet publishing, Memogate), and the larger cultural and generational shifts to news as entertainment (and/or entertainment as news) and away from news as news and, as a result, civic engagement in general (see Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, Daniel Boorstin’s The Image, and Mitchell Stephens’ A History of News).

If it is true that American society is an increasingly postmodern society, one that that believes that there is no objective truth (beyond that which is defined by the individual for the individual), one that devalues empiricism in general, then the traditional journalistic ideals of objectivity and bias-free news are increasingly irrelevant and of diminishing value to society. Esteem of journalistic enterprises based on these ideals, therefore, will continue to decrease.

This article does not argue for an abandonment of journalism’s traditional values, which will continue to be important, but it does suggest that mainstream news media (media elites, MSM, old media) would be best served in exploring and even embracing new paradigms of credibility emerging in and from, among other “places”, the blogosphere and online communities of practice.

Blogs as a tool, not an end. Blogs, Web publishing are part of the problem for legacy media, but also part of the solution, a big part. Part of the problem because of the immediate feedback loop and fact-checking mechanism, the ubiquity of blogs, the speed with which they comment, criticize and fact-check, and the collective damage to credibility all of this error-spotting and commentary has accomplished.

Analogy:
Legacy media = Medieval Roman Catholic Church
Blogs = Martin Luther’s reformers. Printing presses. Translating the Bible into the vernacular. Reading the Bible for oneself.

Blogs as part of a much broader media landscape that increasingly is defined by consumer/user/reader/viewer control. Blogs (video blogs, photo blogs, couplings with RSS, Flickr), TiVo-DVR, search, RSS = CONTROL

>>Jayson Blair resigned in May 2003 after having been found to plagiarize and fabricate quotations in at least three dozen articles from October 2002 until late April 2003.

Notes:
Aristotle: rhetoric, persuasion means of logical (logos), emotional (pathos) and credibility (ethos) of the speaker. Question: How to establish, communicate and maintain credibility.

The character of the blogosphere is one that rewards or values individual voices. Aristotle: The speaker establishes his ethos by manifesting the proper character through the choices he makes in his expression, choices which manifest the virtues most valued by the culture (the audience) to and for which one speaks.

How much of blogging is in reaction to the manipulated messages, the spin, and how much is truly innovative discourse (in content and in communication)?

Trusted individuals versus edited publications How do you create authority and warrant integrity?

Jay Rosen: “We have had a world with artificially homogenous journalism for a long time and I think that’s not going to be true in the future.” (Kline and Burstein, 324).

Rough outline:

I. Introduction
Growth of blogging
“We” media
Rhetoric, Aristotle

II. Statement of Purpose and Problem: credibility crisis, shifts in habits and control; now privileging individual voices

III. Literature Review

IV. Method: Aristotle, Burke, Rhetoric (include data set from Los Angeles)

V. Old Credibility

VI. New Credibility

VII. Discussion of Implications: not either/or

VIII Limitations and Questions for Future Research (our papers, our book to come)

Intro:
There is a credibility crisis in journalism.

The leaders of five of the nation’s most prominent journalism programs joined in a three-year, $6 million effort to “try to elevate the standing of journalism in academia and find ways to prepare journalists better” (Seelye, 2005, May 26). Speaking of the project, Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, told the New York Times: “Journalism as a whole is clearly in something of a crisis,” with surveys showing trust in the news media eroding, newspaper circulation declining and young people disengaged from newspapers and television news (Seelye).

The New York Times itself appointed an internal committee to make recommendations on how to “build readers’ confidence” (Seelye, 2005, May 9). This committee issued a 16-page report, which included the recommendations to “make reporters and editors more easily available through e-mail,” “use the Web to provide readers with complete documents used in stories as well as transcripts of interviews,” and “consider creating a Times blog that promotes interaction with readers.” The newspaper since has implemented all three (one of the first blogs was The Carpetbagger, David Carr’s blog on Hollywood -- http://carpetbagger.nytimes.com/?8dpc). Times’ executive editor Bill Keller said, however, that the Times would not yield at all on accuracy, fairness, and accountability, but that the newspaper did need to more aggressively defend itself on the Internet (Seelye, May 9).

“We strongly believe it is no longer sufficient to argue reflexively that our work speaks for itself. In today’s media environment, such a minimal response damages our credibility. We need to be more assertive about explaining ourselves -- our decisions, our methods, our values, how we operate.” -- Bill Keller (Seelye, May 9).