In his discussion of the current role of citizen journalism in Users Know More Than We Do Journalism: My Session at BloggerCon IV, June 24, NYU Professor Jay Rosen discussed the challenge he has had when discussing using citizen journalists to do original research and gather and report information. Rosen found that for traditional journalists,
Âone of the things they keep stumbling over is their mistrust of amateurs who clearly have political commitments or strong feelings about an issue
They are convinced that..if you ask them to do some knowledge collection the knowledge you get back will be unreliable.
One of the comments on Rosen’s blog said that the answer is that you don’t trust it, as a professional journalists you treat it as a credible rumor and verify it and (if it is true), write about it.”
And so it does seem that knowing how to verifiy is now becoming important not just for reporters, but for all of us when we get our information from blogs, citizen journalists, or consumer generated media (CGM).
Trust is nice when you have it in a particular source: we all do come to know those handful of writers or bloggers who have the most insightful, significant, and valuable things to say, and come to generally trust them
But verification of an unknown source is another matter. We’re all our own editors now and need to know what it means to verify for accuracy.
Starting with the fundamentals, I think that these are the three fundamental rules reporters’ follow when trying to verify some claim or statement:
1. Going to any original source and checking yourself. You need to go to the primary material, original report, broadcast, document, etc and view it. Admittedly, the concept of “original” changes on the Internet: for example, is a digital copy of a document an original? Not technically, but assuming that the document itself is authentic (another discussion altogether) then it is much preferred that you read this than relying on someone’s own discussion, summary or interpretation of it.
2. Get a confirming source– or two–if possible. Remember that our best estimate of truth generally occurs via probability: when it becomes increasingly likely that what you found out is accurate. The more sources or people that say the same thing, the higher the probability is that it is accurate.
3. Understanding the motivations and background of the person making the statement or claim. Although the culture of blogs is transparency and honesty, in some ways, this can make a blogger with a hidden agenda even harder to detect, since we may assume that the blogger is stating his or her views openly.
How else do you verify?
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