Huffington Post UK
Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger said Friday that social media does not substitute for professional reporting:
I think Twitter is a wonderful medium, but in the end there are people represented in this audience tonight and they are called reporters, and reporters like these – once we lose reporters – we are all [screwed].
We need reporters who go out and do reporting. That is not the same as Twitter. That is endangered too because of the economics of newspapers and some people are not aware how great a danger that is. Let’s hear it for reporters.
Also on the panel (organized by the Guardian to assess how the phone-hacking scandal has damaged the press) was Carl Bernstein, who criticized how the press has adapted to the digital and social era. “One of the things journalists have done is to hold conferences to give us an idea of how self-important we are. I think you are listening to a bunch of dinosaurs who are self-involved, all of us,” Bernstein said. “This is the last slap of the dinosaur’s tail.”
Comments