International Reporting Project - Seminar Highlights

In New Media Scene, Transparency Helps Journalists Stay Credible, Says Media Analyst

By Oscar Avila, Fall 2004 IRP Fellow

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12,2004 - The explosion of information outlets and the public's newfound power to become active participants in the media have revolutionized journalism and pose new challenges for reporters, said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, an initiative to clarify and raise the standards of American journalism.

Rosenstiel said the recent changes, including the emergence of the Internet as a key information source, are on par with the invention of the telegraph and television as transforming events in journalism history.

In a way, Rosenstiel said, journalism has returned full circle to American colonial days when visitors in �public houses� would post the news of the day in a common book.

�Journalism was literally conversation among citizens, and it's moving back to that,� said Rosenstiel, who discussed journalism trends with Fellows of the International Reporting Project and the World Press Institute.

Rosenstiel said the new model ends the �false omniscience� of the media, when an anchorman like Walter Cronkite was called �the most trusted man in America� and the work of a lone foreign correspondent, �our man in Havana,� was accepted as gospel.

With �bloggers� and other citizens offering their own streams of information, journalists must explain to the public how they obtained their information and why their accounts should be believed, Rosenstiel said.

�Journalism has to become more transparent, to go from �trust me' to �show me.' Transparency is the �objectivity' of the 21st century,� Rosenstiel said.

He believes journalists also need to be open to unconventional methods of reporting news. He said comedians Penn and Teller presented a segment on the purity of bottled water that met the standards of traditional journalism, from calling in outside experts to running independent tests to using undercover reporting.

�Every generation invents its own journalism,� Rosenstiel said.