Collegiate Times

Within the news media, a debate steadily rages ? which is the better source of news: the instant information of TV and the Internet, or the more meticulous print mediums such as magazines and newspapers? Each have both good and bad sides, but lately the ?instant info? forums have been dominating, even with journalistic ethics becoming somewhat suspect within certain areas.

No doubt you?ve heard your elders reminisce on the good ?ol days of TV news, when stoic anchors like Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow read the news with an impassioned reverence for ?just the facts.? The news would come on at 6 p.m. and the whole family would sit down and soak in the day?s events while eating dinner. Perhaps you recognize some more contemporary reporters such as Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Connie Chung, Tom Brokaw and ? Ron Burgundy?

These days, your elders will say, it seems to be all but completely changed, and perhaps they are right. Twenty-four hour news networks now have to provide constant updates and alerts, i.e. continuous news, even if there isn?t anything to update or be alerted about at say, 2 p.m. on a Sunday. Once a news channel runs out of new things to report on, they are forced to fill the void with more and more time-filling, opinionated tirades.

You might be quick to cry ?hypocrite? at somebody denouncing opinion spewing in a newspaper opinion section, but I would point out that newspapers typically have a table of contents. If you choose to skip over this particular slice of lambaste literature, and instead flip ahead to the Florida State University and Duke game scorecard page, letting your tears soak the paper, I certainly don?t blame you.

With television, you often have sit through a bunch of fluff news, even after scanning each and every FOX, CNN and MSNBC on your dial before the news feed scroll bar at the bottom of the screen briefly shows the information you wanted in the first place. What if you?re pressed for time and simply want to check your stock reports or read up on how your senator voted on a bill? A newspaper has it all set in print, ready for you to peruse at your leisure.

To get the same information on a cable news network, you might first have to sit through programs ranging from a televised town hall meeting on the dangers of video game violence, to hours-long helicopter coverage of pop stars coming and going from court. I am not arguing that news networks are completely devoted to wasting programming on trivial matters, but this type of reporting often slips from the scrupulously comprehensive to simply overkill.

Reporters on these networks have also been known to jump the gun on their information. We all remember the ?too close to call? debacle of the 2000 election, where the networks let their greed of being the first to announce the president-elect overpower their patience for the actual polling results. Individual reporters sometimes make the rest look bad by association. Look at any number of the infamous blunders committed by mustachioed reporting-enigma Geraldo Rivera.

In a perfect world, these problems would stay relegated to the cable news networks and the basic cable bastions; the CBSs, NBCs and ABCs of the world would still hold true to the idea of ?journalistic integrity.? But the popularity of ?report first, ask questions later? is starting to permeate even those established institutions. Respected newscaster Dan Rather?s career was sunk after he reported, during election year 2004, on documents that claimed President Bush?s military record was a non-existent embarrassment. The documents were later proven to be falsified, but because Rather had stood by their legitimacy for a period of time before admitting his error, a great deal of his integrity was jeopardized.

In this upside-down new world of uncertain reporting, even renowned whistle-blowers like Bob Woodward are actually withholding information crucial to scandals within the White House (the Valerie Plame CIA scandal.) This is not to say that this world of information at the speed of sight doesn?t have its advantages. Possibly the only real success story to come out of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was the work done by on-the-scene reporters filming and narrating the horrors of what was occurring while the newspapers simply summarized days later what America had already seen live.

Even Rivera proved his worth by reporting for hours on end inside the makeshift shelter that was the Louisiana Superdome. It seems that there is still room for both fast and slow reporting in the world of news media. As long as there are journalists who strive to keep their reporting honest and well-researched, the particular venue is ultimately insignificant for the reader and/or the viewer.