Audience: I will be focusing my article towards an audience of professional women in the age range of 32-42. I believe that this age group will be interested in how we receive our news and how reliable it is. This age group is apt to be working, raising families and interested in what is going on in the world. With limited time to focus on news, they want the information they receive to be accurate.
Forum: I have chosen O The Oprah Magazine as my forum. This magazine directs its focus to the interests and needs of the audience I am catering to. The magazine runs articles on various topics including socially conscious ones.
Purpose: The purpose of my article is to look how television news outlets should be held more accountable to the information that they are giving out to the public.
Assignment: This assignment is designed for the student to choose a position on a topic and find a way to convey it to a chosen audience. The responsibility of the student will be to accurately support their position in a way that is credible and persuasive to their audience.

Gretchen Bernardini
English 111
Nikki Aitken
23 June 2013
Major Paper #2
And that’s What He Said In today’s busy hectic world, we need to make sure that the time we spend getting information about what is going on in our world is accurate. With breaking news happening every day, we rely on the people reporting the news to be fair, unbiased, and correct in the information they are reporting to the general public. When there are big events going on, especially domestically, many of us either turn on the television or the internet to the big outlets, i.e. CNN, MSNBC, FOX, to get the information and be knowledgeable about what is happening. Referring to the most recent major news story, the Boston Marathon Bombing is an example of grossly misinterpreted information, because when the story broke, it was the middle of the business day for most people, and in the mass chaos that was happening there were a lot of rumors being turned into reported facts. Before the night was over many of the mainstream television news reports were saying that there were multiple, undetonated bombs found in the area, that as many as 100 people were dead and many more injured, and that there was a suspect for the bombings being treated at the hospital. The next day, many retractions were made as most of the information from the night before was proven to be false. If the intended audiences for these newscasts were not able to follow the news continuously, they really did not have any idea what had actually happened. Jonathan Benson, a staff writer for the website Natural News reported in 2011 that according to a Gallop poll, the public trust in mainstream media is at an all-time low. “Americans who say they have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the mainstream media to report full, accurate, and balanced news is now teetering around 44 percent” (Benson). The political slants in news reporting leads to this distrust, when a viewer is watching and is their needs are not being met by the reporters; they will discount the information given. Traditionally, the news is perceived as a way to get the facts, not listen to the commentators’ opinions or political rants. When over half of Americans do not believe that the information they are getting is correct, the news outlets should be concerned about improving this perception. The television news outlets have turned the tides of news reporting into a rating and advertising game instead of being there for their original purpose; to inform the people.
The news outlets seem more focused on getting the story out first than the accuracy of what they are reporting. There is a great emphasis in the reporting world on being the first to break the story or introduce a new level to an existing story. In general, the public will not remember who broke the story first, so why is this so important? In this age, with so much competition, ratings matter over content. If these stations can get the audience to tune into their station they will become more attractive to advertisers. As we all know, advertisers mean money and without this major income source, there may not be a way for a particular station to be on air at all.
Thinking back to the 2000 Presidential Election, Bush vs Gore, the media’s rush to call the election led to a night of reporting chaos, and may have instigated the aftermath that followed. Election night is the “Superbowl” of broadcasting for the news industry. As Alicia C. Shepard from the American Journalism Review explains, “With so much on the line, each network prepares extensively, beginning years before the presidential vote. They hire experts, spend lavishly on dazzling graphics, design eye-catching sets, and do more research than a Ph.D. requires”. (Shepard) On election night, the whole country is watching, and every station wants their station to be the one the public is tuned into. In television, even news, it is all a ratings game, higher ratings equals more money for the station and each station wants to make sure that night is perfect.
By many news sources, Gore was the declared the election winner in Florida and therefore the President, but that was not necessarily the correct assumption. As the night progressed the stations were forced to retract their earlier reports and the new reports varied between Gore, Bush, and too close to call. The nation was left with the question, what the heck happened? “What does ABC do when everyone else has picked a winner and ABC hasn’t? There’s got to be social pressure”. (Shepard) The answer to this huge blunder appears to be peer pressure, if the other people are doing it we should too. In the end, what station is most likely to stand out in the public’s mind, the multiple stations that got it wrong, or the one station that held out and got it right? The station with the most credibility is going to be the one who reported it right, the first time.
Admittedly, the expansion of social media does not do anything to help the mistakes that are getting out to the general public and this is causing problems in a couple of different ways. Staying with the times, the major stations are not only broadcasting on television, but they are also posting news on the internet and Facebook and sending news blurbs via Twitter. When these posts are picked up by the general public and they spread at an amazingly fast speed and even if there is a piece of wrong information posted only for a minute before the retraction, the erroneous information has probably already been picked up and spread to at least thousands of people. Mishandled information could cause a widespread panic, or in other circumstances a false pretense of safety and the people whose job it to handle this information are not getting it correct. While the average person may not believe what their friends post or tweet, if it is a repost from a “reputable” source, they may be more inclined to take it as fact. Every news outlet has a website, and with almost every story post on the websites there are ways to share the story via Facebook, Twitter, and almost every major social media entity. All it takes is one click, and the news, with the source, is shared with whoever the person is in contact with in these social media venues.
Craig Silverman of the website Poynter, wrote about the effects of Twitter on breaking news stories. In January 2012, a tragic shooting, involving Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, happened in Arizona. “Twitter gave me a window into the captivating mixture of urgency, confusion and information that emerges when major news breaks and the story takes off”. (Silverman) Congressman Giffords’ death was reported by NPR and other major news sources soon followed their lead with reporting the same information. Thankfully, this information was untrue, although it spread like wildfire through a few simple keystrokes on Twitter. One of the things reporters need to keep in mind is while they are there to get as much information out to the general public as possible, you never know what family or friends of the people involved are watching and using the news to get information about the people that they care about.
The first place that reporters and news organizations need to start in correcting this problem is to return to the basic rules of journalism. According to the Society of Professional Journalists (SJP), there is a code of ethics involved with being a journalist: 1. Seek Truth and Report it, 2. Minimize Harm, 3. Act Independently, and 4. Be Accountable. (Society of Professional Journalists) While these rules may be hard to remember, especially when reporting live from a moment of crisis, the amount of distortion out to the general public would greatly decrease if the reporters would abide by the code. Sure, people make mistakes all of the time and should be held accountable for them, but to what degree? Paul Farhi of the Washington Post examined this question in an article he wrote the same week of the Boston Marathon bombings when false information was around everywhere.
Mistakes happen often in reporting big, complicated, fast-moving stories like the one in Boston. The question is: How much does erroneous reporting matter these days? One answer: perhaps less than ever. (Farhi)
It appears that the news outlets are taking the attitude that as long as we eventually get it right, there isn’t any harm in making a few mistakes along the way. The errors in initial reporting of these major braking news events are almost expected these days, but that does not make it acceptable. Paul Farhi also points out “It is a basic rule of journalism, drummed into every rookie reporter’s head: Get the story right”. (Farhi) The world, especially the U.S., runs at a very fast pace. The people want the information as soon as it happens and in as accurate of a way as possible, but in everything that you do, never forget the basics, they are what will make you successful. It all comes down to paying attention to the most trusted news source for you. A Public Policy poll was done in February of this year, and as Julie Moos of the website Poynter reports, the line between trust and distrust in television news stations is a very fine line. In trust versus don’t trust in the polls of major news outlets, one did not stand above any other. Fox News was at a 41/46 percent split, NBC News 39/42, and CNN at 38/43. “The poll split across party lines: “Democrats trust everything except Fox, and Republicans don’t trust anything other than Fox,”. (Moos) The most trusted source for news is going to vary from person to person as even the news today has a political slant. There is the more conservative, “right wing”, stations and then there are others that some people view as too liberal. There is not going to be one station that fits all. Ideally, there could be a truly non-partisan news outlet that could just report the facts without any political slant. This would allow the audience to obtain information without anyone influencing their opinion or decisions on the facts.
With so many ways to get their information out, we need to able to trust our news sources. That being said, there is no sure fire, absolute way to do this. In today’s climate of faster is better and everyone wants to win, the only way the audience will be able to avoid misinformation is to avoid the news reports all together. The biggest defense we have is to stay as informed as possible and try not to fall into the trap of helping spread the wrong information.

Works Cited
Benson, Jonathan. "Public Trust in Mainstream Media Remains near All-time Low, Says New Gallup Poll." Natural News.com. Natural News Media, 24 Sept. 2011. Web. 17 June 2013.
Farhi, Paul. "Mistakes in News Reporting Happen, but Do They Matter?" WashingtonPost.com. Washington Post, 19 Apr. 2013. Web. 17 June 2013.
Moos, Julie. "Poll: Fox News Most Trusted (and Least Trusted) Network in America." Poynter.org. Poynter Institute, 6 Feb. 2013. Web. 19 June 2013.
Shepard, ALicia C. "How They Blew It." American Journal Review. University System of Maryland Foundation, Feb. 2001. Web. 23 June 2013.
Silverman, Craig. "A Year Later, False Reports of Rep. Giffords Death Still Reverbrate for the Press." Poynter. Poynter Institute, 8 Jan. 2012. Web. 23 June 2013.
Socity of Professional Journalists, ed. "SPJ Code of Ethics." Society of Professional Journalists. Society of Professional Journalists, n.d. Web. 23 June 2013.