The Fourth State of Media

Argentine journalist Rodolfo Walsh spent his last minutes alive on March 25, 1977, in a gory shootout with military thugs in front of his home. The day before, he had sent a letter to newspapers, radio and television stations in Argentina and the United States, denouncing the military government. Only after the military regime fell five years later did the letter see the light of day. 

Under similar circumstances today, Walsh would perhaps have published the letter in a Huffington Post column, and as the government thugs scurried to murder him, they would find Christine Amanpour’s smartass smirk and a frenzy of international reporters waiting for them. 

The Internet affords journalists quick, efficient access to information — and an immortal cyberpublication that can instantly broadcast thousands of articles, pictures, and videos to millions of readers. The Internet smashed an industry created by power-hungry tycoons. 

It also redefined ethical standards. No story is too uninteresting, too cliché, or too scandalous for this new media: Huffington Post editors strip bylines from articles from other sources and rewrite and run them as “original” content. Gawker media can pay an anonymous source more than $2,000 for testimony of his underwhelming one-night stand with Tea Party member and Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell and accompanying sultry .jpegs of her in her ladybug outfit. 

Most print writers and editors scream that sites such as these perpetuate lazy, immoral, sensational, and mind-numbing standards. But as each Rocky Mountain News or Honolulu Advertiser meets the same fate as the velociraptor, a generation of journalists is molding a new medium, one that gives an unimaginable ability to read — and experience through videos, slideshows, and graphics — more news. You can open your computer and let the Los Angeles Times crime map show you which neighborhoods have the most stabbings or vehicular homicides. 

But as our ability to consume news deepens, our connections to countries across oceans wither. 

Every year New York University, University of Southern California, Northwestern University, and University of Missouri arm more undergraduates with journalism degrees and world-class networks than there are foreign correspondents in South America. Most newspapers’ overseas bureaus have closed in the past five years; Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg survived by creating a paywall (requiring a paid subscription to access news) for their extensive international business coverage. That’s great if you want to learn about coffee futures, but disappointing if you need to know that drug trafficking and counterfeit goods between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay skyrocketed so much that Interpol, a European agency, opened its first South American office in January. 

We are now letting a corporation or two tell us how an event happened, while denying billions the ability to deliver their versions of the story. Mainstream media covered the garment factory fire in Dhaka, Bangladesh, that killed 27 and wounded 100 last December, pointing to the sealed emergency exits and lack of fire escapes. However, only two western news sources, the Associated Press and The Guardian, mentioned that the factory produced clothing for the Gap, JC Penney, Abercrombie, and Target. 

Ex-foreign correspondents attempted to fulfill the international news gap by creating websites including Global Post and Latin American Herald that give ex-pats and American students the opportunity to post blogs with glamorous overseas datelines. But underneath the slick layouts, interactive slide shows, and sexy headlines (“Is China Killing Africa’s Elephants?” “Bob Dylan Does Asia”), a neocolonial stench reeks. 

Politico, Gawker, and The Huffington Post require their reporters to fulfill a weekly story quota. Why not create a global network similar to these, but of local correspondents from all over the world who write in English? This network would recruit bilingual journalism students from major cities around the world, briefly guide them through camera usage and ethical guidelines, equip them with a press pass and a generous stipend, and demand that every week they produce 10 stories that they feel are the most important in their communities. 

These rookie local correspondents could act as gatekeepers to their own cultures. Imagine a Pakistani student shooting a video of a booming marketplace in Karachi bustling with expats and tourists — and then revealing to us that a mafia paid hotels to warn tourists away from other neighborhoods. It would put the power to represent a country, a city, and a community in the hands of people who live there. 

New media mutates writing a news article into a science rather than an art. It’s who, what, where, why — but in 300 words with video. Now the art lies in doing the research, getting a quote, and more importantly, seeing the impact of this new information on an audience.  This form has the potential to tear down regimes, expose corruption, and empower everyday people. The only ones who should fear Internet journalism are the ones who have something to hide.