My Thoughts on Crowd-sourcing & Doxing

Lauren Cornell
Sep 7, 2018 · 4 min read
https://goo.gl/images/zPccHz

Crowd-sourcing can be a nifty tool for journalists, as long as they choose to use the information wisely. Nowadays, it’s easy to learn about a breaking news event on social media because once an event happens, people take to social media immediately. The downfall to social media is that many times, information that isn’t true can be shared and go viral instantly. If journalists are crowd-sourcing on the internet, they need to do some research before taking that information and sharing it with their viewers and followers.

One of the fears that I have when it comes to how easy it is to share news on social media is that this puts the power in the hands of regular, everyday people. When I scroll through my Facebook feed, I frequently come across news that isn’t accurate, and news that is completely made up. I feel as if it’s more common for people nowadays to pay less attention to the news that reporters share as opposed to regular, everyday people. That is why it is important for all reporters to work hard to find a way to grab the viewers’ attention.

https://i.gifer.com/8lq8.gif

As anxious as you might be to share breaking information with your viewers and followers, you need to refrain from sharing information until you know it’s true. Although it may be easier to just take your information from a handful of tweets you see on Twitter, verifying that the information is correct is of utmost importance. As a journalist, it is your job to be as reliable and as accurate as possible. Even if you share incorrect information once, your viewers will begin to question how accurate you truly are, and you may lose your viewers.

https://gifer.com/en/5dJo

Doxing, in my opinion, is completely unethical. There is never a time that a newsroom should be taking information that is not verified and sharing it with their viewers. Doxing is completely unacceptable because you are taking information about someone or something that you never got permission to use. One example of doxing that comes to mind is when I was in my senior year of high school and my friend got into a car accident that ended up killing his best friend. One of the local news outlets decided that it would be okay to release the name of my friend, who was the driver of the car, and his friend, who was killed in the accident, within hours of the accident happening. Not only did I find this unethical, it was unacceptable and against the law because they were both minors. After the article was released and people found out that my friend was the driver, he received numerous death threats. Sure, he may have received them if the he wasn’t mentioned in the story, but I feel like there were more people targeting him and the targeting happened sooner because the story was released.

Private information is usually private information for a reason. Even though your newsroom might want the best and the juiciest story out there, journalists should be honoring people’s privacy and not invading their trust. If you leak private information about someone, that can ruin the rest of their lives. Journalists need to remember to stay unbiased, and honor one’s privacy. Everyone has the right to privacy, and it is not a journalist’s job to invade it. Journalist’s need to think about how that person would feel if they broke their trust and released private information, and should also think about how they would feel if someone did the same to them.

http://gph.is/1H7FpMI

If I was in the newsroom the day of the Boston Marathon Bombing, I wouldn’t release any information until I did my research and had my information confirmed by officials. I’d never share any raw information from social media out of respect for friends and families of the victims. Although many newsrooms believe that it is a race to release a breaking news story first, it is of the utmost importance to remember that sharing accurate information is more important than sharing news that may be inaccurate. Although I do not have experience being in the newsroom when a breaking news story unfolded, I still believe that all journalists should go into their job remembering that accuracy is more important than rushing to release inaccurate information. It may be difficult in the moment, but I think that as long as journalists learn from past events, such as what happened surrounding the Boston Marathon Bombing, then we can improve on the ways in which we go about sharing information surrounding a breaking news story.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade