Will such ill-defined boundaries for what now constitutes “journalism,” it doesn’t seem inappropriate to use Perez Hilton as an example of what’s being reported by the media. His latest headline reads “Michael Is Not The Father, Confirms Egg Donor/Ex-Wife.” In fact, over the past 24 hours, I’ve heard all about Michael’s illegitimate children…his staged marriage to Elvis Presley’s daughter…his extreme debt incurred from the Neverland Ranch property…his multiple failed plastic surgeries…his seeming lack of race or gender…his reckless parenting…and his questionable sexual preference.
The list goes on.
The news feeds on Twitter and Facebook have been seas of stories since Thursday evening. With additional vehicles like iTunes podcasts, Wordpress blogs, text messaging and RSS feeds driving the media, a clean form of journalism that accurately reports the facts no longer stands a chance. I recognized this while watching CNN last week at the gym. It was noon - peak news time - and the anchor was showing photos from the chaos in Iran, with a graphic logo that read “Unverified Material.” The images were gathered from camera phone files uploaded to the internet. I can’t see this sort of thing occurring even ten years ago, when serious journalists fact-checked and double fact-checked hard news. Especially not on a network like CNN. When CNN is turning to unverified photos from the World Wide Web as its source of news, it’s clear that we’ve entered a whole new era of media.
It makes me wonder: If we had the same technology in the 70s as we have now, would Elvis Presley - arguably the only other music icon as pivotal as Michael, save maybe Madonna - have been just as defiled upon his deathbed? While these new, instantaneous, unsubstantiated forms of media have done our world justice in terms of efficiency, I can’t help but think that they’ve also stripped journalism of its integrity and substance.
Elvis died when I was 9 or 10 years old? The headline read ELVIS DIES ON TOILET. Defiled indeed.
ReplyDeleteNo "new" media existed on that hot August day in the late '70s, but I remember being struck and overwhelmed, as many were, by the sordid nature of the telling and speculative re-telling of how he died. Were pills scattered on the bathroom tiles? Was his last breath on the toilet or on the bathroom floor?
"Schadenfreude" is a German word for the joy some feel when the mighty are brought low. I am sad to report that there was a lot of compromised joy in the air when Elvis died.
Perhaps, as you write, there once was a golden age of journalistic "integrity and substance." I would suggest, however, that human nature being what it is, there wasn't. Likely a journalist has to build it from the ground up every time he or she writes. Which may, in part, explain why it's so hard to sustain. Thoughts?