Journalism: It's Going Down the Drain

Rule number 4: news on the internet is rushed and often not true. The invention of the world wide web has allowed for the instantaneous transmission of information. This is simultaneously amazing and terrible. On one hand specific groups of people can receive live updates on events that impact them heavily. But on the other hand, these stories can often be inaccurate. Journalists have always had the potential to release false information because they’re trying to push out stories as fast as possible. This problem has only increased as the internet has become a more common platform for these journalists. This reminds me of a particularly ridiculous example of journalist incompetence. On November 26, 2016 a single twitter user reported that CNN was currently airing hard-core pornography. Keep in mind that there were no other reports backing up this user’s claim, so it would seem that this is not a credible story. But apparently plenty of news media outlets disagreed because they all made stories about titled things such as “CNN Airs 30 Mins of Hard-Core Porn.”  CNN quickly denied this and since there were other sources confirming it, it was proven to be a hoax. So obviously all the media outlets that reported on it submitted updates informing people of their mistake, right? Wrong. No because of the ability to change articles that already have been published on the internet these journalists just changed the title to things like “CNN Denies Airing 30 mins of Hard-Core Porn” and kept most of the same information within the article. Here is one that is still up: https://variety.com/2016/tv/news/cnn-porn-boston-rcn-cable-operator-1201926702/ . A story like this would never have been published before the world wide web, and if it was a formal redaction would also have been printed. These companies are way to eager to get clicks, and they do not stop to make sure all of the facts are straight before uploading a story.