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by Nate Johnson, editor
Humans are driven by our need for information. We wake up every morning to read the daily newspaper and close out our day by watching the evening news. We have an innate need to know exactly what is going on in the world. And as more and more people enter the Information Age, we are using the Internet for those immediate information updates.
The Internet is a remarkable technology. It allows anyone to access the latest in current events instantly. News stories appear on CNN's website almost as fast as they can be typed. No video to edit, no broadcasts to schedule, and no newspapers to print. But there is a quote that is often used in the computer industry: "A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history--with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila." This is especially true in the world of Internet news.
The ultimate goal of any news media organization is to report the latest information first. The Internet has allowed the media to achieve that on a whole new level. But it has also allowed them to report on breaking news without going through the fact checking that would normally happen before a story is presented. This will inherently lead to mistakes being made and news being misreported.
With so many people connecting to the Internet these days, misinformation spreads like the proverbial wildfire. Following the September 11 attacks, every possible scenario, whether fact or fiction, was being reported on the Internet as truth. A shocked nation was ready to except anything in order to explain what happened.
More recently, a story surfaced about the iLoo, a computer-enabled portable toilet that Microsoft planned to use in Britain. The iLoo would allow its "users" to check their email and surf the web while taking care of...um...other needs. Many news sources, both Internet-based and in other media, immediately picked up on the story. Microsoft issued a news release stating that the iLoo was simply an elaborate April Fool's joke and apologized. It then issued another press release informing the public that the iLoo was indeed real, but that the project had been killed.
For weeks afterwards Internet news sources were still not reporting the story with complete accuracy. Certainly Microsoft didn't help the situation, but many news services could have corrected their stories with a little research.
So what does this mean for the portion of the public that gets its daily dose of current events from the Internet? Well, a little healthy skepticism might be called for. Everyone knows that humans make mistakes. Most people know better than to get involved in things like get-rich-quick schemes because of skepticism. But why should we feel any different about getting our news from the Internet? Should we have blind faith because the top of the page says AP or CNN or CBS or ABC or ...?
