Barbara Howard: The documents related to the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy — released. Reams of paper. The question: how to sort it all out? That's the challenge for media outlets, and papers like The Boston Globe and The New York Times are turning to crowdsourcing to sort it all out. The Boston Globe has put out a call to readers that says, “Help us comb through the new JFK files.” And in a note to subscribers the New York Times writes, “If you're reading the papers and identify a notable passage photograph or something you found interesting that you think we should look into, please let us know using the form below,” and then there's a form to fill out. So just how unusual is this? WGBH News contributor Dan Kennedy — no relation, by the way, to the Kennedy family — is here in the studio to answer that question. Thanks for coming in, Dan.
Dan Kennedy: Thanks for having me, Barbara.
Howard: So is this new?
Kennedy: No, it's not new, and it's becoming more and more common. I think that the first time I was aware of something like this being done was maybe about a dozen years ago when the liberal website Talking Points Memo asked its readers to look into the removal of U.S. attorneys around the country shortly after President George W. Bush was elected to his second term. There was a lot of talk that that was politically motivated, and it was a controversy over his then-new attorney general Alberto Gonzales and the sudden removal of many U.S. attorneys. And people around the country sent in news clips from their local areas reporting on what had happened to the U.S. attorneys in their areas. That was probably the first prominent example of this.
Howard: So how helpful and reliable is this process?
Kennedy: I think that in a lot of cases of journalism in the digital era, we can do some very interesting things when we work with our audience. But if we turn over responsibility to our audience, you can really get into trouble. You have to check out what they're sending in, essentially. You can't just say, “Oh, this is interesting, let's publish it immediately.” Can't do that.
Howard: What are the risks?
Kennedy: I don't know that there are any risks, unless a news organization decides to get lazy and really turn the whole project over to its audience. For instance, I could imagine a scenario in which the audience just starts posting this stuff in the comments, unvetted.
Howard: Conspiracy theories, et cetera.
Kennedy: Conspiracy theories, all kinds of garbage like that.
Howard: So you need an editor to be over —
Kennedy: You need an editor. You need the human power being provided by your audience. But you also need professional journalism and editing applied to it at the other end.
Howard: Well already, television stations are asking viewers to send in photos and videos, and they populate their news programs with that free content. Does that endanger journalists’ jobs?
Kennedy: You know, I don't know that it endangers journalists’ jobs, but it does endanger the credibility of the news organization that's using that material if they're not taking some steps to vet it and make sure that it is what it's purported to be.
Howard: So it's all about oversight.
Kennedy: It really is about oversight, and I really do think that in this era, when our audience can bring so much to the table, it makes all the sense in the world to use the power of technology to kind of fulfill that old vision of news being a conversation with our audience. But it's a two-way conversation. We talk to our audience, our audience talks to us, and then we check out what it is that they're telling us. When we interview sources we have to vet what they tell us, when we use public documents, we have to vet the veracity of what's in those documents. So, in a sense, it really isn't that much different. The rule is journalism is a discipline of verification, and that applies to any information that's coming to us, including information that we've asked our audience to provide us with.
Howard: OK, thanks so much Dan.
Kennedy: Thank you, Barbara.
