This post does a little bit of a backtrack to the topic of crowd sourcing, but I found a blog that is relevant to the issue and my thoughts/concerns about its relationship to journalism. Actually, the problem I have with crowd-sourcing could really apply to any of it’s applications wherein accuracy is important. Take Wikipedia for instance. It uses information from the masses to create its entries, but what if the masses aren’t as smart as we assume them to be? It doesn’t even have to be a big piece of incorrect data– say for instance I create a page about myself (it would totally be the most visited site on the web, duh) and I tell everyone my birthday is November 28 instead of 29. This clearly isn’t life altering information, but the point is that this incorrect data becomes common knowledge and then somehow sort of morphs into the truth. Like Stephen Colbert says, truth becomes what the market supports. Truth becomes what one person types into an entry box on a computer, even if it isn’t based in factual information.
The use of crowd-sourcing for journalism really makes this point. Media companies are relying on individual people’s accounts of what happened, but what if that person gets it wrong, or doesn’t stay for the whole thing or in some other way makes a mistake? I’m not saying that professional journalists don’t make mistakes but in this digital world of crowd-sourcing, you don’t know the “reporter” from Adam and he doesn’t really have any stake per say in what he’s reporting to you. Although I see how the information gathered could be helpful, a sort of ears and eyes of the people, it should also be taken with a grain of salt.
