Everyone Ones a Source

Crowd sourcing information has now become an important technique for building a breaking story. With everyone having a voice on the internet now and a way to share it instantly, journalist roles are changing. In this new age of sharing information, journalist now can reach out to individuals over the internet and collect the details they need.
The roll of a journalist in this social media world is becoming the ability to navigate the snippets of information shared by people as a story unfolds and put the parts together to create an accurate story. This becomes a game of comparing one tweet to multiple others to see if the general consensus of whats being said is the same across the board as a social media fact check, also looking for tweets from officials or verified accounts that may be more accurate. With everyone having cameras on their phones now, its less about having a camera crew on a scene right away, but instead finding someone online who may be a bystander with a photo or video that you can use to get the content that tells the story from the moment it began.
While the internet creates an environment where much our privacy as a person is lost at the same time it can give us the power to speak our mind while staying anonymous. With “doxing” though we are seeing this issue of people who are using their right to freedom of speech and privacy being stalked and exposed online by those who disagree. I find that there is this mob mentality on the internet when there is enough people disturbed by what someone may have said online. This leads a motion where a group wants to find and expose this person with the intent to publicly shame them at a personal level over a disagreement in opinion. When this happens people who may have thought they were saying something harmless or in a joking sense are attacked by large numbers of other internet users and face consequence in their real life with out just.
In the news room I believe it should be a standard practice to keep someones identity private just as how they would if someone asked to have their face blurred in a video. If a newsroom does decide to expose someones identity and leads to unforeseen consequence to the individual, a news room should be held responsible for the damages.
In a breaking news story the first thing I would be looking for are post made by individuals at the scene confirming that there is a situation happening. Once I see enough information to solidify a real story I’d then begin to find photos or videos of the moment being shared online. Using these pieces of media I can first give a visual report, which in many situation leave a more serious impact on a follower than just reading a report. People want to see how serious a situation is, almost as a way to believe something that is seemingly unbelievable. Second piece I would look for is what people in the area are saying is happening. I would search for patterns in reports in order to share an accurate story in real time based on a general similarity in what people are saying. After a solid idea of what is happening is reported I would then search for verified and official accounts such as local police and emergency department. This would work as a system of confirmation and fact checking on my initial reporting and allow me to add details that may have been missed by the general public. After all the initial chaos the best way to finish is to update the story with the accurate collected facts that come with the days afterwards.
