International Law

AFP is not a fan of Web 2.0

On Tuesday I blogged about how a UK lecturer had banned their students from using Google and Wikipedia (see here), but it seems as though academia is not the only sector to be concerned about using Wikipedia and other new media:

It?s one thing for Agence France Presse to ban its workforce from using Wikipedia content as reference material. It?s a whole other level of ridiculous to put the kibosh on Facebook citations. If reporters can?t tap the Web?s social networking space for fodder, what will the 24-hour news cycle come to? Madness, we say. Madness.

Okay, perhaps the tone of that intro there wasn?t exactly a just portrayal of the steps the AFP has taken recently in an effort to tighten up that journalistic integrity thing news critics have been carping on about for?a long, long, long time. It?s certainly true that both Wikipedia and Facebook have their respective problems concerning facts and falsities.

But for the AFP to prevent its foot soldiers from ?relying on many new ?virtual? sources for news? seems a tad too generalistic a move. Rather, journalists ? as well as their editors ? should take it upon themselves to learn the ways of Web 2.0, and adapt their investigative methods to encompass modern Internet services. Shunning Facebook outright does neither the AFP or its readership any good.

Yes, errors have been made by journalists concerning authentication of Web-based sources, and they should be addressed. But there has never been a time when reporters ever relayed truths ? and nothing but truths. Mistakes have continually been made since the genesis of the Gutenberg. So the issues raised over the need to clamp down on any referencing of digital material are really nothing to worry extensively over. As long as repairs to news records are made in a timely fashion, journalists should be open to explore most all noteworthy facets of the Web.

Read more here (from Mashable).

Full post as published by Freedom to Differ on January 19, 2008 (boomark / email).