Truthiness?

Disclaimer: It's going to be hard for me to focus this post, so be prepared for some rambling on my part. It's been a day full of provocative things to think about.

This morning I attended a panel discussion about "finding fact in the age of truthiness." The discussion was led by Tom Bivins, The John L. Hulting Chair in Media Ethics at the University of Oregon. The main goal of the panel was to discuss the place of opinion in news journalism and how that place has changed and will continue to change over time.

First, I would like to mention that the word "truthiness" was apparently invented by Stephen Colbert. Google defines it as, "In satire, truthiness is a "truth" that a person claims to know intuitively "from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts."

This is the difficulty that journalism faces today, and it's a two parter. One, readers are choosing their own truths -- they decide what they want to believe despite evidence or facts, and part of this is enabled by technology. When you can customize your online news to only show you the news stories you care about, or only subscribe to news that leans in your direction of thinking, you aren't getting the whole news. Two, journalists might have a tendency to report on things because it "feels" true without backing it up with facts and evidence. This type of reporting might appear rather opinion based, or point of view based, when in actuality, it's just bad reporting.

"People now can order their own news through the web," panelist Mike Hunsacker said. "The business of journalism has to work much harder to build and audience and sustain an audience. If there is no audience, there is no service."

Panelist Mike Fancher said that good faith with readers is the essence of journalism. It's hard to establish that faith when you can't even establish an audience. "In a world of such constant bombardment of information, journalists are struggling to figure out what grounds they stand on, so they are turning to this opinion journalism," he said. "It's not a good ground for journalism to stand on."

Another interesting point, made by panelist Lee Wilkins, was that journalism as a profession has lost its moral high ground. Journalists have forgotten how to fact check and dispute bad information or wrong facts -- instead they are relying on their idea of truthiness. "I can look at Jon Stewart and see better in depth reporting than on the front page of the New York Times," she said. Why? Because Jon Stewart isn't afraid to tell his audience when they have been lied to by the media. "To say something is a lie is not opinion," Wilkins said. "Lies can be proven."

So is opinion without a place in journalism? No, not entirely according to the panel. "If we are willing to say from the start that we have an agenda in our reporting, then it's journalist and it's honest," Fancher said.

And this is where blogs come in. As panelist Mike Hunsacker said, this is why blogs are so rich. "They give us the ability to dig deep into the material," Hunsacker said. "You aren't just verifying and attributing sources. You can take your readers directly to the source, show them the documents and the interviews and let them see for themselves."

While I stated earlier that new technology could be driving readers away from good journalism, Fancher noted that so many good things can come of technology and journalism, mainly because of the blog. "In the digital world, there is the opportunity to layer and layer information," he said. In the interactive internet world, the opportunities are wonderful but we have to seize them."

Not only can they layer your stories, bloggers also have the ability to post news every minute of every day. Not many newspapers can do that. However, journalist bloggers must have the same level of truth and accuracy as traditional journalists. Otherwise, their opinions are no different than anyone else's -- and we all know what they say about opinions.