OTM #1 January Surprise

I'm a little late on this OTM, but I felt it drawn to explore this theme as tackles an ethically questionable subject. The broadcast deals with the Ethical responsibility of mainstream media to report information that may or may not be true.

Brook, the host of OTM brought on a Journalist from Slate to speak about Buzzfeed's decision to publish the anonymous Trump-Russia dossier.

I was so intrigued by this podcast because in their discussion,  Brook and Will spoke of the responsibility that media plays in sharing information with the general public. Although they both agreed that it is inherently the social role that media plays to disclose important information relevant to the public they also stressed that Buzzfeed's actions were unethical because the feed openly admitted that the dossier was unverified research. The role media plays is to educate the general public with developing Accurate news.

Although in disagreement with Buzzfeed's (and ultimately Slate's) actions Will pointed out an important point which generates curiosity as to the psychological motives for running the story. Will states, that there were multiple sources of media that had access to the Dossier but simply "sat on it." The two speakers speculated for a few moments about the motives but my takeaway from the conversation is this.

The major media outlets like CNN refused to publish the full dossier because they knew it was unethical to run unverified news, even if evidence (such as the debriefing of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump on the dossier) could support its validity.

However as soon as Buzzfeed published the dossier Major news outlets began running their own stories using the loophole of reporting on the Actions of Buzzfeed rather than the dossier itself. It was very interesting to observe how the timing of the reports followed only after some media had the audacity to run the questionable report. The analogy that I would use for this story is that everyone wants to jump in the lake but also wait for someone else to take the plunge to judge the depth first.

In the end I respect Brook and Will's opinions but ultimately I appreciate Buzfeed for running the story because as the two hosts point out the article did admit that the dossier could not be verified by them. To me, even though false information is rampant in society, it should not be the role of media to simply sit on information, especially one regarding the actions of the POTUS. However I do admit that it is also the duty of the media to research their own stories to the most accurate extent possible.