Media Watch
Hold the technology - again, please. This time the issue is e-mail in the news business, especially as surrogate in interviewing sources.
Do all journalists agree with such a sweeping restraint? No, and not necessarily in all situations. But most seem to - or should - as electronic forms of obtaining information have taken over so much of our lives.
E-mail can be effective when arranging interviews, not usually in conducting them. It is fine for submitting letters to the editor or providing reporters with feedback.
Also, in rare situations, near-impossible-to-reach news and feature sources can be electronically captured. But even though some journalists are using these methods more, most professional juries are pretty much in agreement:
Massive e-mail has massive limitations in news gathering. It seldom can be adequately trusted. Unless you know "the author" extremely well, e-messages could be written by just about anyone or under other uncertain conditions.
E-messages especially tend not to be interactive - or not nearly as much so as person-to-person interviews or most telephone conversations.
And while we're at it, forget most faxes, too. They also tend to be canned (non-spontaneous, too over or occasionally even underprepared, rehearsed) and best limited to a few business or entertainment-type communications - perhaps more to get a "big name" on the record.
At minimum, any news story these days using such technologies needs to acknowledge them. Readers and listeners/viewers have a right to know with confidence not only where their information comes from but also how it was obtained. One parallel: when news coverage stresses that quotations have come from a prepared (a.k.a. press agent/officer) news release.
In this Silicon Valley heartland of information innovation, these alertings are meant mostly ongoing re-education for us all. E-mail surely is often fast and efficient, a flexible option in many personal uses. But such temptations should not encourage deviation from basically sound news information-gathering, reporting and writing practices.
After all, much e-mail is transmitted anonymously (part of its raison d'etre) and, even when identified by e-address or name, is subject to extra questions of source, credibility and motives. And we know such doubts need not be added today to assembled concerns over media performances.
A purist point of view? Perhaps in part. But the bigger message is we must continue to be especially sensitive to potential shortcuts caused by technology and how they might be affecting us.
It is one thing to chat about the wonders of search engines, and it is quite another to keep in mind what we are searching for in the first place and why and how valid, reliable, accurate or precise information might be after we find it and start sharing with others.
Careful monitoring of the media can help educate us about many human and related technological conditions. Too in-house a concern? Not when - to extend the analogy - much of the very technology being created and packaged comes, both figuratively and literally, from our very back yards.
David L. Grey, Ph.D, of Mountain View, is professor emeritus of journalism at San Jose State University , where he taught and researched on media law and ethics. He can be reached at: greyline@pacbell.net