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News beginning to break conventions

For me, hearing about Whitney Houston’s death on Saturday night was strange.

It’s not because I’ve been a huge fan for years and have all of her albums—actually, I probably only know two of her songs. And I’m not going to be one of those bandwagon fans that suddenly realizes how much they idolize a singer only after they passed away. I’ll admit, I was probably listening to the Spice Girls or some other ‘90s sensation band while Houston was in her prime.

It’s an awful shame that Houston—who undoubtedly did have one of the best voices of her generation—died, but what I found most interesting was the way in which I, and I can only assume the majority of you, heard the news.

Initially it was from several BlackBerry messenger status updates, which read “RIP Whitney Houston,” or something along those lines, that I found out. Instinctively, it seems, my next move was to check Twitter to confirm or refute these claims. And of course, my Twitter feed was full of tweets from friends and celebrities lamenting the icon’s death. Finally I saw a tweet from the New York Times reporting on her death, which gave me the utmost confirmation.

But the crazy thing about this is that it was a friend’s status update that informed me—a friend who is in no way associated with a news agency. This friend is just a regular university student who felt the need to report on this tragedy through her only necessary means—a smartphone.

And I suddenly realized that on a number of occasions I’ve become aware of major news via a Facebook update. Along with websites like Reddit and Twitter, social media has revolutionized how news is reported, and to an extent who is reporting it.

Gone are the days when you would have to wait for the six o’clock news to hear about current events. And if you missed that, you were stuck waiting for either the nightly news, or the newspaper in the morning. And considering how technology has progressed, it almost feels surreal that only 20 years ago this was the norm.

Although I think there are many benefits of being able to acquire valuable information literally at our fingertips, I do see some red flags when it comes to this type of news breaking.

Now brace yourself—I’m going to use a sports example here, so if you’re not a baseball fan, this example might go over your head. Back in December, the Toronto Blue Jays were making a bid for a highly touted Japanese pitcher named Yu Darvish.

Essentially the winning bid was kept secret aside from a few Major League Baseball senior officials, but that didn’t stop Twitter from exploding with speculation and gossip that eventually crept into the territory of news. Blue Jays fans everywhere were rejoicing and practically lining up to buy Darvish jerseys before the official news was even released.

Then came the heartbreaking announcement that it was in fact the Texas Rangers, rather than the Blue Jays, who had actually made the winning bid. It was a hard pill to swallow, but it was completely unnecessary—this was an example of social media speculation spinning out a control, creating news that was hearsay.

This is an extreme example, but it should warrant some caution to all of us when it comes to believing everything that comes from unofficial sources. Don’t get me wrong—social media has been a valuable addition to the way we both report on and ingest news, but it’s important to be critical readers and to always try to decipher fact from fiction.

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