Decentralized media/Wikileaks Group 2 (Erin, Sujay)

1. How do you verify decentralized media (the information)? Focusing on decentralized journalism at this point. See also Citizen journalism
   • Videos, pictures, etc… - Social Media as well
   • Primary, first-hand accounts, sometimes powerful (Twitter in Iran).
   • But how to verify and hold accountable?
     • One of the great things about decentralized media is the extent to which it can hold normal media accountable, e.g. the Dan Rather scandal.
     • But who checks the checkers?
     • Accountability is not only about verification: Are there times when it is better to choose not to publish? Norms taken on by "professional" journalists that do not but "should" apply to decentralized media as well? (E.g. wikileaks and national security, compare general, esp. government, reaction against those who think that information wants to be free).
   • Bias within decentralized media, is it a problem?
   • What criteria do people on the internet use to deem something fact vs. opinion (bring up CBS story, 60 minutes). See also Wikipedia as News Source.
   • Contrast with journalistic ethics codes and internal regulations (see Journalistic Ethics Wikipedia page and Anonymous Sources Wikipedia entry).
   • See also Citizen Journalism is dead; posits "three deadly E's" including ethics, economics, and epistemology (although it appears the author has changed his thoughts a little); Grassroots Journalism: Actual Content vs. Shining Ideal.
2. Crowdfunding (view huffingtonpost article)
   • Contrasts traditional narrative that new journalism will replace old journalism. Instead, harness the same forces that donate money to grassroots political campaigns to donate money to fund news articles requiring a lot of investigation.
   • Anytime money exchanged, fear of bias
   • See this article, which talks about Spot.us.
3. The legal regime and the "centralized" news media have over time developed a reasonably stable set of norms / regulations to govern various policy concerns, including First Amendment, defamation, confidential sources, etc. How well do these ideas translate when news is coming from "amateurs"?
   • Should the policies be redesigned?
   • See, e.g., this article, which talks about how a journalism "shield" law that's been stalled in Congress anyway is being blocked even more now because people don't want wikileaks to be able to use it as a shield.