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| Yes | 54% | 45 votes | Total: 84 votes | |
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Add to FavoritesFour points of difference that make all the difference of the world...
1 availability of space
The printed press has limitations due to its format and the necessity of inserting commercials within these limits.
Hence, the journalistic articles are often shortened by editors.
On the internet the journalist could be completely free of any pressure to contain his investigational tendency towards nuancing the news and giving background information.
2 intertextuality
On the net it's even possible to link directly to other digital information or even to all the resources used for putting together the article. (Books can be scanned, audio or video of interviews can be brought online, radio and television information can be digitalized, things, people and situation can be visualized by images or pics.)
It's even possible to put the notes of the journalist online as well as his stream of consciousness during the creation of the journalistic piece in question ( via online notebooks and microblogs ).
Any article could contain the links to all the materials needed to make the article, the article could even provide a wikibased history of it's own writing history.
3 adaptability
An electronic article can be corrected online, updated and discussed.
This is at the same time a quite negative site of e-journalism; if you don't have at least the history from the published version as well. A printed article appears in at least some 2000 copies and is definitely defined for once and ever, though the newspaper can correct the content publishing an other article or apologies for mistakes.
All printed versions normally are exactly the same and you can refer to it in a permanent way, making it possible to others to check the quotations or viewpoints you're referring to.
Electronical versions of texts, but also images, photos and videos can be altered at any time. They can disappear completely from one moment to the next.
Therefore printed versions are preferable for transmitting knowledge from generation to generation: not all the copies can disappear at once. And preferable to in the search of the truth: they can't alter that easily.
On the other hand, a printed version of information isn't as up-to-date as an electronic version can be: in modern societies more laws are changing then anyone can follow and at least once a year the law codexes are published in an up-dated form.
[BTW, these are already imperfect at the moment of their appearance in print, because from the day the editor changed the latest bit of information up to the moment of publishing, one or two laws will almost certainly be alter by the politicians.]
4 portability
Electroni c articles are more readily available on the one hand, but less portable and calpable as an entity on its own. If you have a publication on a subject, you can grasp the complexity of that subject by holding or embracing that publication.
You know that all the knowledge the community of scientific collaborators had, has been put together in that work and you can admire the effort put in to this object of knowledge.
On the internet on the other hand, you're put before the task the scientists themselves are confronted with, namely controlling the correctness of the newest theories, reading the latest publications on a subject and distinguishing quality from mediocrity.
Even watching the e-seminars on any academic subject is possible, but you can't watch all of these, not even for one single subject.
Printed articles and books are finite and structured ways for communicating a view on the vast ocean of knowledge available. You can re-read a passage you didn't grasp completely the first time around, you can make you're own annotations and you're own resume of a printed work and grasping the essence of it.
The internet on the other hand doesn't give you that same opportunity, you have to make up your own vision all by yourself, comparing for yourself the quality of the information you find with everything you've seen before and this on all the points.
I'm experiencing this myself at the moment, trying to find out as much as possible about microblogs; a very new subject, thus almost no one has published on article on it as yet.
But at the same time, this also means there isn't any exhaustive listing of microblogs available.
The few sites on the subject are already aging, because they still mentionning yappd.com which seems to have been a quite excellent service, but doesn't exist no more...
I can find some books mentioning Twitter or Jaiku, sometimes even Tumblr as sub-entrees in an chapter about blogging, but at this moment not a single printed volume exists on the topic of microblogs or microblogging on its own.
I've already written my own entry on Wikipedia on the subject, because it wasn't treated by anyone else. I would have preferred up to some point just reading an article or a book on the subject and knowing about theirs usefulness, applications, proliferation and the implication of this phenomenon, but like it's brand new I'm kind of writing that book myself.
[Sorry for being shifted off-topic.]
Learn more about this author, Pieter Jansegers.
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No
Whether discussing the ideals in journalism or the way things really play out, essentially there is no difference in ethical "codes" for print or for online media. They probably both strive for independence, objectivity and accuracy. In the end, either or both will give you thinly veiled opinion, innuendo and guesswork.
It's not that every last piece in print, or online, is inaccurate. Probably a good majority of these stories are, for the most part, true. The point is, oftentimes, either form of media wants to get the story out there and get it out now. Let accuracy be damned. The question asks about the differences in the codes and there doesn't appear to be any - for good or bad.
Another person wrote that the first two rules of journalism are "Be accurate and be on time." Unfortunately, it appears that a solid majority of professional journalists reverse the order of the mantra. In striving to be first, a considerable percentage of writers seem to be willing to sacrifice accuracy. This holds true for any form of media.
The most obvious and famous example of this, was the Chicago Tribune's notorious headline from 1948: "Dewey Defeats Truman." Apparently, the majority of editors there thought the election was a foregone conclusion. They went ahead with the story, without awaiting the actual results, put the paper to bed and went to bed themselves - only to wake up with egg on their faces. (On a side note, it would be interesting to read the text of that story. What kind of figures did they present?)
People who are media snobs would probably argue that the newspaper has a longer tradition and is, therefore, a more reliable source for news than the intenet. There can be no doubt that one must be careful when gathering news from the internet. There is a lot of bad information out there. Blogs can be especially tricky. While some bloggers do true reportage, the overwhelming majority present opinion in disguise.
There's not necessarily anything wrong with that, as long as one recognizes that as such. Print news does the same thing. They are honest about it in the op/ed pages and less so with the "objective" news. The styles may be different, but the overall presentation of "news" really isn't.
Are there differences between print and online codes of journalism? Ideally, both forms of media would like to present honest, accurate and objective reporting. In reality, both forms will do anything to be first. For good or for bad, there doesn't really seem to be a discernible difference between the two forms of media and their codes of journalistic ethics.
Learn more about this author, Paul Schingle.
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