NextGen PRose

Advancing Media Transparency

ZDNet's David Berlind poses an ever present question in journalism today:  What role can and should technology play in contributing to transparency--full disclosure--in the media?  Berlind is actually experimenting with new mediums like podcasting to demonstrate how journalists can build new "channels of transparency."

By providing the uncensored, unedited raw data used to assemble a news story, opinion piece, or blog entry, the problems of misquoting, quote truncation, placing quotes out of order to arrive at an unintended meaning, quoting out of context, or manipulating interviews in the interests of a particular agenda could go away.

How?  Well check out his efforts in this opinion piece, Why Blogging Matters to Your Business and Your IT.  He actually relies on quotes from UserLand Software's CEO Scott Young from a recorded interview and then podcasts the uncensored and unedited recording.  He even includes in-line time-codes in the text allowing readers to fast forward to the exact location of the quote in the audio file.

This is a great experiment in transparency initiated by a journalist who understands the potential for new technologies to enhance the media consumption experience.  I'm eager to see what else unfolds over there at ZDNet, and beyond, spurred on by Berlind.  His final thought is golden:

I hope other journalists [this applies to much more than just journalists] take what I've done into consideration and expand on the idea.  In the name of integrity, we won't know the answers until we start trying some solutions.