Taking news coverage on the death of Michael Jackson, Professor Daniel Reimold of the National Technological University believes reportage on the piece of news highlights the problem with new media which is there is “a lot to be said, a lot of space to be filled, a lots of readers pressure and at time there is short of news and they don’t stop reporting and what you get is a lot of thriller and a lot of crap.”
Professor Reimold defined the media circus around Jackson’s death as “absolutely rumor and innuendo and gossip.”
“Michael Jackson died and that was it that was the story one piece of news a little bit of intrigue about what happened certainly. But often news reports were basically one source blog post one after another telling us all sort of sights that was untrue pretty sensational and nothing to do with quality journalism,” he added.
“With the online medium 10 minutes after they posted he died the post is old and they need to give readers something new.”
He believes the tight deadline and pressure to be the first tramped any sense of journalism. “They were giving us random celebrity reaction... they were telling us that a truck was driving up to the [Jackson’s] house they were telling us that certain people were missing many other didn’t mean anything at all.”
The new media is also influencing other media on how they are reporting stories, Professor Reimold said, television news knows they need to do something to get viewers’ attention and pull them away from websites like TMZ - a celebrity gossip site which first reported Jackson being rushed to hospital with an heart attack.
He also points out the web has mentality of be first and be bold to the point and the truth is secondary to simply what is out there.
"Newspaper and television doing basically feeding into the web mentality report anything they are hearing often second hand a site like TMZ.
The joke is that nowadays with the web…You almost need to be reporting a story before it’s happened. By the time you heard it in breaking news…Shoot! We are already behind. It’s the Truth Be Damned philosophy…We got to get the stories out..Let readers sort it aside,” Professor Reimold said.
Despite concern over the accuracy of news that is circulated in the cyberworld, the information highway does channel out news stories, especially breaking news quick and far.
A remark about how people learnt about the death of Michael Jackson in an article by Charles Arthur in the Technology Blog of the Guardian shows how prominent the new media has taken over the traditional press when it comes to access to breaking news in the 21st century.
In the article entitled: How Michael Jackson Jackson's death captured the Twitter's Trend dated 26 June 2009, he wrote: "
"Where were you when you heard about Kennedy being shot?" (Media: Radio, TV)
"Where were you when you heard about Princess Di?" (Media: radio, TV, text message, mobile phone call)
"Which message service did you hear about Michael Jackson's death on? (Facebook, Twitter, Twittscoop)
Hands up all those who found via a piece of paper...
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