Journalists are fantastically capable of forgetting the he-said-she-said False Equivalence mode of dishonesty if they are themselves one of the sides. In that case, they quote only the "skeptics" side, not the side that may have actually something intelligent to say about the matter.
Watch this incredible video clip.
It shows a horse dealer, a horse trainer, a farrier and a saddle-maker sitting around the table, with serious faces, discussing this new invention - the car! It is just a fad. Those engineers know nothing about transportation. This will remain just a toy for the idle and the rich. No way a car can do what a horse can (like rear, buck, kick and bite). And how do we know - because we are the transportation experts!
Translation: People who used Twitter (and FriendFeed and blogs, etc.) to report from the scenes in Mumbai during the attacks and standoff cannot possibly be journalists. Let's give them another name - how about "newsgatherers"? Why are they not "journalists"? Because they are not us. They don't do what we do - bloviate about things we know nothing about but can pretend so well.
This NYT article also introduces the same word for a journalist who is not "one of us":
A decade ago, Blogger was one of the first services that allowed anyone on the Internet to immediately publish his or her own content. It forever changed the face of media (witness the blog you are currently reading) and the way people communicate. Twitter is an extension of that transformation, Mr. Williams said.
"I was surprised by blogging. It took me a while to realize the profundity of blogging," he said.
He is not surprised, though, that Twitter is being used in newsgathering, as it was during the terror attacks in India last week. "I've actually been waiting for it to happen," he said. The day Barack Obama was elected president was Twitter's most-trafficked day ever.
Twitter will complement other forms of media, he said, the way that blogs and newspapers co-exist. "New media never kill old media," he said. "It's all part of an ecosystem."
Then Twitterers surprise them from the inside, reporting blow-by-blow from a behind-the-doors meeting:
CNN, a division of Time Warner, invited several dozen newspaper editors to Atlanta last week for a summit about its forthcoming news wire. Gatherings of journalists aren't usually off-the-record affairs, but CNN probably didn't expect each segment of the summit to be shared with the Web. Then again, the increasingly popular Twitter, which allows users to share short messages with others, sometimes acts as a wire service as well. (CNN declined to comment.)
Dan Conover puts it the best:
...Thing is, if you don't think Twitter is useful or valuable, don't use it. Please don't care about it. It's really no skin off my ass. Those of us who use these tools aren't offended by your opinion. In truth, we just don't find your opinions all that interesting.
The strengths and weaknesses of Twitter and other social media tools are far more apparent to the people who use them than the people who don't, so you're not breaking any news to me when you tell me about their "flaws." Half the conversations on social media are various forms of bitching about social media tools.
And when we observe with wonder the mysterious things that occur because of these proliferating new tools, and probe their meanings and implications obsessively, by all means try to frame that as a discussion about editorial control and quality. The party didn't start when you noticed it. It didn't stop when you left. It doesn't care that you don't think it's a good party and that you and your friends want to go somewhere else. Knock yourselves out...[read the rest for the excellent and biting analysis]
But with a lot of gentle hand-holding, the dinosaur journalists can start "getting it"....
Update: Another new term - iReporters, sounds better as it suggests the people are journalists. And some are better than the professional journalist who wrote this article using a single case he liked and hand-picked because it proves his point.
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I trying so hard not to get sucked in.... but it's pulling. Twitter, damn you! :D
So much else in life and science, journalism lies on a spectrum. The sooner media execs accept this, the sooner they'll be able to more comfortably adopt new forms of reporting.
Uh, newsflash, old media has been poisoning itself for decades. New media needn't make any particular effort to kill old media. Old media is poorly adapted to the ecosystem and likely to die regardless of whether new media can do it any damage.
The amazing thing is that we are witnessing the death of TV and printed newspapers right now. They are trying to be in both worlds and compliment the changing news consumer, it's not working very well. They are in a disarray and out of cash; Tribune Bankruptcy, selling of papers in Denver, Miami, and all the papers for sale everywhere. Mergers, consolidation, and during a recession the advertisers are getting more value from low-priced online media. Plus, everything you just said right here.
I can't think of any outright kills but some are close enough. Town-criers still exist, but since the printing press and wide spread literacy they aren't the force they used to be.