How would you respond to a nude, provocative image of Jesus on NY Times front page?

Thomas Paine, famous author of Common Sense, offered treatise on how we should treat religious opposing views

In the controversy regarding the cartooning of the Prophet Muhammad and the violence that occurred against the publication in France that carried the cartoons, few have asked the question about making fun of a specific religion and whether or not the provocative nature of it is a necessary way to express free speech, as folks continue to discuss the nature of expression and how we communicate ideas.

France has historically led the way with its philosophers, who like kings of congresses set precedents for people to use in developing a path to constitutional freedom.  Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States during the early days of the country, was known to be a fan of Voltaire and Rossaeu, using many of their ideas to formulate his own, even in reference to his development of America's foundation of freedoms, its Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

Traditional ethics mixed with new media recommended to avoid 'America's Got Talent' news

Arriana Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post

Much of our news today is driven by popularity, by votes and comments.  This means someone who spends considerable money, time or both on social media, or has an agenda that supports many followers, may acquire readership for articles whereas news and information the public needs can be abbreviated and sensationalized to attract attention.  Do we want news that is treated like Americas Got Talent so that serious, ongoing education is interrupted? Or is there a different way to offer news that most especially is critical because of the need for collaboration and solid information as new threats to world security occur?


The Huffington Post consists largely of articles written by hundreds of unpaid bloggers, quoted as reliable sources, which many can be; but like many outlets who's picked for the stable and who stays in it is like  America's Got Talent.   Some of the bloggers, for example, have been chosen from those individuals who have outstanding activity from posting comments and obtaining followers and responses.  But it isn't just large blogs that respond to social media vote-getting activities but other news outlets too, which may negatively impact the traditional role of the press in its role of educating, informing and holding power to account.

 The television show America's Got Talent allows people to rise to the top and perhaps win the contest and receive a recording contract and other perks.  It selects people at each level based on the judge's selections and audience response.  This means a balance of popularity and merit, although the judges also consider audience potential in casting their vote.

The outcome of a given contest might offer a serious surprise, as in the case of 10-year-old Jackie Evancho, when many people believed she would ultimately win on America's Got Talent because of her uniquely gifted voice and presentation on the show, that everyone agreed was special.    She lost, however, to Michael Grimm, a talented fellow for sure but didn't have the accolades and YouTube views that Evancho had had all along.  But America seems to likes being contrary too, a form of defiance that sometimes is used just to upset the odds in a fashion that says "you can't control what I do."  Even when the audience favors a contestant, the person actually picked to proceed may simply be a result of this contrariness that often occurs when there is a dispute and people want to voice their independence.  The same thing occurred in the case of Susan Boyle, who lost the top spot on Britains Got Talent, as people began to find the unpopular or the negative in her personality or simply were contrary in not wanting to conform to any predictable outcome.

Popularity picks may not, therefore, foster the best talent but the most popular for a segment of the culture that happens to vote.  But there are many people who enjoy the talent of those who perform who never cast votes in these contests.  So the potential of picking the best talent is lessened by those who don't participate in the voting process.  The cream may not rise to the top.  Do we want the news treated the same way?  What has been the result?  The press is said to be no longer trusted, as observed by Gallup Poll results in 2012, and divisions in social and political areas are often along the lines of the more sensationalized factions.

The same strategy of using what is popular, or anticipated as vote-getting by readers or news observers, is now used for news sites as well, both citizen and traditional, if we could call the Huffington Post either.  The Huffington Post is a mix of both professional journalists and bloggers with specialties in particular areas, making it difficult for the public to sort out what is fact-checked and responsible information and what is not. Guiding the front page by picking the popular, based on a select few who vote, means front page news, and news that lingers, often focuses on the trivial not the headline material that may be most important.

Picking the popular also means those with enough Facebook friends and other contacts on the Internet have great advantage over those who focus on important news and features and have less time to solicit attention on social media sites.  There are those who write well and those who sell well; and sometimes they are both very different. 

News outlets have editors and America's Got Talent has judges who assess the talent and offer feedback.  But the owners of newspapers, and their investors, look for readership numbers as the evidence that a news item is of value, even as major news stories are sometimes cut short in favor of the details of a recent celebrity wedding, such as that of George Clooney, where days were spent in covering every detail.  This occurred in the midst of weather disasters and terrorist threats, with 10 minutes at the top of the hour devoted to the major news and the rest a narrative of entertainment value.

This tendency to vote for the popular, as it dominates all forms of media, means the petty, irrelevant or simply entertaining, offered as it is in large quantities everywhere, simply overwhelms news that has major information and education.  The need to know is answered by shorter and shorter phrases and sentences, so that even the language of the news is abbreviated like so many text messages.  This is explained away by those who say people are simply to busy to read or listen, yet this negates the fact that books like Fifty Shades of Grey are read by millions.

Traditional news sites are driven by popularity also because of the growing number of citizen news sites where people offer their take on the news.  Some of these sites are managed by editors; others are blogs set up by ordinary folks often with political or religious agendas. These continue to proliferate; and as they do, it simply drives the problem deeper that the important, front-line news may not have either the details or the top tier for public notice.  Search engines also favor the flavor of the month.

The concern in using vote-getting to determine the headlines and what is featured first is that it takes away from the premise most pronounced by those who wrote the protections for the press in the Constitution.  The U.S. Constitution, in terms of its guarantee of freedom of the press, is one form of providing the press its own platform, but other free governments have their protections as well.  Those protections relate to the relevance of the material and the primary role of the press.  That primary role is not entertainment but education and information relevant for living one's life.  This, and holding power to account, were the three main goals of journalism, according to Thomas Jefferson.Polls and popularity votes and cliques that gather together to foster a friend's success do not protect democracy but in fact jeopardize the ongoing, universal education democracy needs to succeed. 

Most people want to find an area where they can succeed and be noticed.  If a child is a budding artist, he or she feels good when the teacher puts the drawing on the wall for all to see.  But is this the way media should be managed?  

This is a simplistic explanation for the problems related to using popularity as the measure of what counts in the news, but the tendency for people to use vote-getting to measure their own success, and for others to assess them as well, means information written by well-meaning, motivated, yet agenda-driven people, who may not fact check sources, nor even write well,  will be read more often than others.  The result is that the popular continues to rise to the top, and the very art of writing with skill, detail and fact-checking may be lost.

.America's Got Talent is surely good entertainment, but too often many people wonder why obviously talented people are chosen over someone with a unique following and an absorbing personal story.  The problem is that when the news is treated in the same way, it is a world of us that suffers from lack of knowledge and quality information, at a time when universal education is important for creating and maintaining free communities and preventing or correcting the major problems around the world..

A new direction might be to re-examine some of the old ways used in the new methods of transmitting news via print, online and other forms of mass communication.  Rewarding quality news material that is in-depth, detailed and fact-checked is important, and that reward means to let investors and owners know by active reading and participation.  And perhaps news outlets need to remove the comments per article and return to the Letters to the Editor methods for reader interaction, so that vote-getting for popularity does not drive the news. Universal education through the mass media might then become a reality, as people learn the sciences, history and other details to help them understand why government leaders make certain decisions.  It can also serve to improve holding power to account, that goal of the press established by Thomas Jefferson's words that are likely as good today as they were when written and that allow the past and present best methods to present news in ways that can make a difference in the lives of individuals and nations.

Bloggers must meet same standards of ethics as traditional journalists

With the proliferation of blogs on the Internet, decisions from the courts about who should have protection as the press under the First Amendment have vacillated or been unclear at times, yet they offer warning that publishing falsehoods can open up the potential for lawsuits, even as the courts continue to sort out decisions regarding guidelines writers must meet to be offered freedom of the press protection.



Federal Judge Marco Hernandez of Oregon ruled in 2012 that Crystal Cox, a blogger, was not entitled to media protection through the shield laws of Oregon given the press, leaving her vulnerable to a jury finding her guilty of libel. This issue, when it first came to light in 2011 with the lawsuit, seemed to open the door to denying bloggers media protection under the First Amendment and for future lawsuits against other bloggers.

At the time of this decision, the debates about freedom of the press hit the blogosphere, with anger spilling out of sites across the Internet.  Most of this came about through a lack of understanding of Hernandez decision, as he did not say all bloggers are not journalists but that Crystal Cox is not one.

Cox had opened up approximately 2000 websites referencing different companies.  She was said to have defamed one of these companies in such a way that Attorney Kevin Padrick of Oregon filed a lawsuit against her referencing the website she had created called obsidianfinancesucks.com.  She called the senior principal of Obsidian Finance, LLC a "thug" and a "thief" and made strong accusations about the firm committing financial wrongdoing.  But the court discovered, during its examination of the facts, that Cox had approached Obsidian with her PR service, offering for a fee of $2500 to fix the problems she had actually caused.

Early this year a different decision was rendered, and this time the decision was that bloggers have the same rights of free speech that journalists have, but it also means they are held to the same standards that include not maliciously spreading falsehoods.  It now means writers like Cox must prove she did not know her comments were false at the time they were made. According to the court's opinion, Cox has a history of making allegations of fraud and other illegal activities "and seeking payoffs in exchange for retraction."

Some bloggers often state their presumption that finding the truth is more important than the means used in finding it. There is often a willingness to say too much without contemplation of consequences. Too often criticism becomes a virtual character assassination that allows people not just to criticize but to literally tear apart institutions and individuals with impunity. These are the concerns brought about by legal decisions that hold journalism as a profession with a knowledge foundation. The biggest part of that foundation comes from the ethical discussions of what to print and what not to print as part of journalism training. Another part of the foundation is the presumption of a well-rounded education that helps foster critical thinking and subject matter information related to history, current affairs, science and other subjects that are often tied to news stories.



Many citizen journal sites, such as Digital Journal and Yahoo Voices make some effort to train people in quality writing and offer editing to correct spelling, grammar and other details. Often, however, the writer of the article becomes involved in the comment discussions, which places that writer in the same arena as the readers who may offer more opinions than facts. When a factual account is presented that counters preconceived ideas of certain groups, the writer is forced to defend those facts over and over again which can make those facts appear more and more like opinions. In the world of journalism training, the writer offers the material as a standalone product, allowing readers to sort through the facts to develop opinions as opposed to debating them with everyone else. This produces a shaky ground for the blogger, or citizen journalist,with unfounded or prejudicial facts, without the training and expertise to examine the ethics of printing those facts in the first place.



The openness of the Internet has allowed anyone and everyone the opportunity to write information. Too often blogs have no contact information or a complex set of rules that make it difficult to establish dialogue when information is refutable or clearly wrong. It also offers an arena for plagiarism when whole articles are lifted, or large sections out of context, and there is no contact information. At the same time, many bloggers have special skills and knowledge that can aid in the development of news stories.



Pairing citizen journalists with professional journalists has worked well for traditional newspapers and newspaper – blogs that are hybrid media outlets designed to facilitate writing in the easier blog-style format and the traditional news writing style. The Huffington Post has succeeded in offering an array of writers on various topics along with news stories in the manner of mainstream media.



While bloggers often uncover information before the mainstream press, just as often that information may be presumptive or premature, in the rush to be the first and the one to reach the higher readership to bring the bucks to the blogger. Citizen journalists are paid by page views, most often; so the interest is in the numbers that can make the difference in where their stories are placed on the page and how much they earn. Mainstream journalists are either salaried or paid by the piece, so that page views are less relevant than offering quality material. As the lines blur, and the news information proliferates through many sources, the competition increases and spills over into quality vs quantity issues with respect to article length and number of articles produced for any given publication as well as the orientation and type of features or news. Competition and search engine requirements also mean writers of all stripes must seek to use certain keywords and ideas in certain ways in order to promote the material. Social media becomes the avenue of communicating what topics and titles are available on any given site. This can often mean writing what the reader wants to read or hear as opposed to offering what the customer needs.



The conflict in general in the news industry has much to do with that conflict between what the reader wants and what he or she needs. The blogger is seen as favoring the former, and the journalist the latter. It means sensation-seeking individuals find what appeals in the most high-profile fashion sometimes at the expense of factual material that may not “fit” the attitudes of the target audience.  Those are some of the risks involved with the freedom of the press opportunities that make it difficult to discern what is fact from fiction and the well-researched article vs. one that is made up out of whole cloth with just enough substance to skim through the court doctrines on the First Amendment rights.



Those who favor offering the protection of press freedom to anyone who writes and publishes material open up that proverbial can of worms, because as the protection for the writer may be valuable, the protection of the community as a whole, may be jeopardized as anyone writing anything can mean more confusion than knowledge and more entertainment than information.  The counter argument, however, is that the press is more than a handful of people who go to school at a University and take a series of classes to prove their capability in writing news material.



In fact, as reflected by the commentators on Fox News and CNN, entertainment is often the orientation of the press, both alternative and traditional, as people continue to differ on what constitutes news in the first place and who should relate it as well. Sometime politicians and preachers, along with lawyers and comedians, have entered the news business, along with bloggers, some of whom, after a short citizen journal experience, offer themselves as having the same rights as traditional journalists. This minimizes the profession of journalism, even as the responsibilities for accuracy in reporting increase with the serious issues of the day. It remains a dilemma that has ignited debate, while more and more people enter the journalism business, given the open door that presently exists. On the other hand, those who lack training and/or relevant experience and maintain the blogger role may find themselves having to learn the ethical standards that provide safeguards when facts are wrong and people are hurt as a result.