Twittering the News: How Twitter is Affecting the News Industry

April 29, 2009 at 6:32 pm (One-Shot)
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Twitter is a social networking (or “micro-blogging”) service that connects users and allows them to interact with each other by reading and writing posts, called “tweets,” up to 140 characters in length. It is the brainchild of Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams, who “first envisioned Twitter as an easy way to stay in touch with people you already know” (Caine Miller, 2009) in 2006. They first saw Twitter’s news potential during an earthquake in San Francisco, CA, the same year, when they read other accounts of the earthquake from other users in the city, according to an article by Claire Cain Miller (2009).

Now Twitter is gaining attention as the newest way for news organizations to reach younger and more technology-oriented consumers. Cain Miller writes, “the news-gathering promise of Twitter was most evident during the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last November” (p. B1), when citizens “twittered” (posted to Twitter) about the incident as they were experiencing it first-hand. Since then, Twitter has seen a 900 percent increase in its user base (Sarno, 2009), which has made it one of the Big Three social networking websites just behind Facebook and Myspace (Cain Miller, 2009).

If you search for “news” under Twitter’s Find People page, 4,047 results will appear (and searching for “journalist” garners even more results). CNN, ObamaNews, BBC Breaking News, and Fox News are among the Twitter pages at the top of the list. Newspapers like the Orlando Sentinel, the Oregonian, the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times all use Twitter regularly for breaking news updates; Shepard Smith of Fox News uses his Twitter account to comment on the news as well as popular culture; even the Weather Channel has its own page and responds on air to responses they receive on their tweets.

News organizations around the world are turning to Twitter to quickly update their readers and viewers on what’s going on in their communities, their countries, and the world. Twitter has become a medium for everything from politics (an ABC news anchor “twinterviewed” Senator John McCain in March) (Harper, 2009) to sports (ESPN has its own Twitter account).

The trend toward twittering news may be attributed to the way we consume news—or more accurately, the way we don’t. David Mindich (2005) points out in the preface to his book Tuned Out that “the future of our democracy depends on young people” engaging with the news, especially as older, more news-conscious citizens age. Yet, according to a poll by Wolfram Peiser in 2000, only 21 percent of the 18-22 year old respondents reported that they read the newspaper every day (Mindich, 2005, p. 28). Of those polled in another study, only 14.4 percent of that same age group said they regularly watched CNN (Mindich, 2005, p. 32). Statistics collected by the U.S. Census Bureau estimate that 18-34 year olds constitute about 70 percent of Internet users (U.S. Census Bureau, 2009, p. 711), so it’s no surprise that news organizations are turning to the newest popular technology to try to grab their attention and their patronage.

Twitter also is gaining potential as a news venue because of the fast pace of our society today. Co-founder Biz Stone said in an e-mail:

Reporters and news agencies seem drawn to Twitter because of its immediacy — something notable happens and they just reach into their pocket and text about it. That text can be instantly distributed to hundreds or thousands of ‘followers’ … or it can be ‘protected’ and only shared with an editor or a small news team for the purpose of gathering data in the field. (Tenore, 2007b)

The public’s need for instant and constant news updates about important topics, and their waning time to consume it, is driving the media to consider Twitter as its next best thing.

As an emerging news medium, Twitter already has its allies as well as its enemies. Opinions run the gamut from “a valuable tool for journalism” (Harper, 2009) to “a worrying development” (Sutcliffe, 2008) for media—in the words of Keith O’Brien, Twitter is “both magnificent and evil” (O’Brien, 2008).

Those who see Twitter as a boon to the media share the sentiment of John Harris, a senior engineer at the New York Times, who believes sites like Twitter can help news organizations better orient what they do to their readers, viewers, and listeners (Tenore, 2007a). Executive editor of The Washington Post’s website, James Brady, believes that “[s]ocial media is a pretty good way to get young readers to read news,” and supports the “social filtering of news” (Emmett, 2008) that has come about thanks to websites that use recommendation systems. Others tout the globalization and connectivity that Twitter and sites like it provide both the general public and mass communication professionals, who can glean story ideas from following and reading tweets from other professionals and organizations (Tenore, 2007a).

Like blogging before it, Twitter has racked up critics in its first years as an experimental news medium. Twitter “helps propagate rampant arrogance, terribly self-indulgent memes, and a steam-rolling of those who get in the way,” according to Keith O’Brien’s article in PR Week (2009). London reporter Tom Sutcliffe in 2008 chided the BBC in his article in The Independent for relying on Twitter for information during the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, saying that they “should be a bit more careful about blurring the boundary between twittering and serious reporting.” He points out that factual errors in citizens’ tweets could potentially hurt the credibility of the BBC (Sutcliffe, 2008)—and logically that can be said of all news organizations.

Jacob Harris acknowledges that one disadvantage of Twitter is the risk that internal information might accidentally be leaked on Twitter, but says that “these risks are not unique to the medium” (Tenore, 2007a). David Sarno (2009) noted in his article in the Canberra Times:

Even a few years ago the word ‘blog’ inspired that peculiar mix of derision and dismissal. . . . That blogs have become a fixture of media and culture might, you’d think, give critics pause before indulging in another round of new media ridicule. (p. A13)

If Twitter does, in fact, go the way of the blog, its future in journalism seems bright. News organizations turning to micro-blogging can have major impacts on the way news is presented and consumed. It will fill, if not create, a need for concise news reporting, create another facet of the job of reporters on scenes, and make communicating with newscasters and those in the newsrooms of newspapers, magazines, and radio stations much more efficient and gratifying.

At least on the Internet, in the future Twitter may create a cycle in media that will cause a shift to micro-news; the presence of instant gratification for the news will cause it to be expected, and when it is expected, the media will deliver. It’s possible that in the future, the long news reports we see on the Internet will be replaced solely by tweets or feeds of tweet-sized posts—which could, potentially, cause a shift back to newspapers for those who want more information and more in-depth discussion than what can be communicated in 140 characters or less per post.

The more Twitter becomes a staple of reporting and news gathering, the more important it will become for reporters to be able to post instantly to the site, whether it be to their own professional page, or to their organization’s. This will require reporters to learn to write succinctly and to leave out all the fluff, only giving the who, what, why, and where of a given newsworthy event, while still being able to write a full-length story to either be linked back to on the organization’s website, or to appear in the paper or on the broadcast soon after. In the words of Ana Marie Cox, “If I strip out the padding, . . . what’s my real point?” (“A-Twitter,” 2008, p. 40).

For TV news, Twitter has already made communication between anchors and viewers quicker and easier, much in the way that anchors like Bill O’Reilly reading and replying to viewer e-mails on the air has done. Anchors Clayton Morris and Alisyn Camerota both respond to tweets during Fox And Friends on the Fox News Channel. Even at The Weather Channel the meteorologists answer tweets during the national weather report, addressing questions and comments from the channel’s Twitter followers. With the combination of personal and professional tweets coming from media professionals, anchors become more accessible, which can potentially lead to better feelings from the public about the media in the long run.

Is Twitter the next step for the media to entice readers to consume more news? It seems very likely. Once it has been demonstrated to be a reliable source, Twitter may become a successful approach to connecting news media with the “tuned out” generations Mindich (2005) identifies as 30-somethings and under, and to catering to the needs of news consumers in their busy lives. Overall, Twitter can have a positive impact on the news industry, but only if it is handled correctly.

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Physician-Assisted Suicide: Compassion, Not Crime

February 20, 2009 at 9:57 pm (2008, Articles)
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Physician-assisted suicide has always been a very controversial subject in society—the ancient Greeks brought the subject to forum, as euthanasia in Greece and in Rome was an everyday issue. It is even written in the Hippocratic Oath (written in the 4th century B.C.E.), “I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan” (“Hippocratic”). Today both euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are still tough topics to tussle with, in our society and around the world.

Although the terms “physician-assisted suicide” and “euthanasia” have been used interchangeably, there is a distinct difference between the two. The name “physician-assisted suicide” may be self-explanatory: it is a patient dosing themselves on medicine prescribed by their attending physician while the doctor is not present in the patient’s room, and it is the patient’s decision whether to use the drugs or not, and when. (“Physician”) Euthanasia, on the other hand, is more aggressive; the doctor actually administers the drug to the patient which subsequently causes their death. In this paper I am going to address physician-assisted suicide specifically.

I am arguing for PAS on four bases: first, that refusal to allow it is a violation of the inherent right to self-determination of the terminally ill; second, that it can save patients and family, as well as health care providers, money; third, that physician-assisted suicide could save patients and families the trauma that comes with the uncertainty of natural and slow death; and fourth, that PAS is actually much more humane than allowing a suffering patient to die naturally.

Patients should have the choice of physician-assisted suicide, because it is a manifestation of their right to self-determination as it is interpreted from the Constitution. The Supreme Court ruled in Planned Parenthood v Casey (Leo) that “choices central to personal dignity and autonomy are central to the liberty protected by the 14th Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life.” This translates simply to the idea that one should have the final say about what happens to one’s body, outside of the realm of directly harming others.

Physician-assisted suicide can save patients, their families, and health care providers significant amounts of money. One Hospice Care professional cited a hospice care cost at roughly $6,000 per two months per patient (“Hospice”). Much or most of this is funded through Medicare or Medicaid, although both of these services are costly to these patients on top of their already high hospital care bills. Much of the money going toward hospice could be more advantageously propagated to medical research, children’s hospitals, and other medical programs that have unstable funding but serve functions crucial to the health of our society as well as other countries that rely on our medical breakthroughs. Outside of the realm of hospice care, “[a]ccording to recent Medicare data, for a beneficiary who dies of cancer after receiving conventional care, $30,397 (in 1995 dollars) is spent on medical care in the last year of life” (Emanuel and Battin). This includes medications that cost upwards of $4,000 a month, which may or may not be covered by Medicare (James).

The self-dosing of PAS could save patients and their families the pain and heartbreak that comes with prolonged dying and the uncertainty that accompanies it. It allows patients to decide when to end their own suffering, which gives family and friends ample time to say what they need to say to their suffering loved one.

Lastly, physician-assisted suicide is more humane due to the drugs prescribed and taken than letting terminally ill patients suffer until death. In the Netherlands they use high doses of barbiturates for PAS; this type of drug affects the central nervous system, and causes sleepiness. Barbiturates are a central nervous system depressant (CNS), used to calm patients before surgery and can be used to control seizures, sleep problems, and nervousness, although other drugs have begun to replace barbiturates in these last two areas (“Barbiturates: Purpose”). A barbiturate overdose can be likened to dying in one’s sleep; anxiety levels decrease and heart rate and respiration reduce (“Barbiturates Drug Information”), which is much more peaceful than the months leading up to death from the patient’s terminal illness.

One might argue that physician-assisted suicide is, at its basest, still simply suicide, and that if we as a country allow for the terminally ill to commit suicide, who is to say that we won’t extend this right to those who are depressed? Are we not denying this right of self-determination to them if we refuse physician-assisted suicide to them? I do agree that this could become an issue if PAS was legalized, but whereas such conditions as depression can be treated through medication, terminal illness can only be micromanaged, not cured, nor can the subsequent death be prevented once a patient is in such poor condition that a doctor will classify them as terminally ill. One might also argue that suicide in either form does directly affect the patient’s loved ones, but in the end, the one who suffers the most during the dying process is the patient who is dying.

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