A social media era twist on a familiar adage about trust
This editorial is a consensus opinion of the Daily Herald Editorial Board.
Newspapers have a variable relationship with social media.
Speaking for the Daily Herald, we enjoy and value hosting pages on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and Facebook, including our own pages and our "Everything ..." community pages, Suburban Wildlife page and others on Facebook. We monitor community conversations and often notice concerns or threads that lead us to investigate for stories we publish in print and online. Yet, we also recognize that claims and speculations that appear in social media are notoriously unreliable, and we bristle at surveys showing many people are forgoing traditional forms of news media in favor of getting their news from sites like X or Facebook.
There is no percentage in fighting the inevitable, of course, so it's pointless to issue a blanket condemnation of social media as news sources; but, it is important to remind users from time to time that, lacking any editorial norms or standards beyond the extremely permissive management of civility monitors, the details of what is spread on social media, if not the core information itself, must be approached with healthy skepticism.
Case in point: a small story we published online and in print Wednesday near the bottom of Page 3 in only our Cook County editions.
As a rule, this is a story we would not usually report at all. Except in circumstances of unusually compelling public impact or interest, we do not report on suicides or attempted suicides, and this was a case involving self injury which didn't even rise to that level, as best we could immediately tell. All we had was that Rolling Meadows police had found a man Monday morning near Salt Creek with a self-inflicted, non-life threatening "chest laceration" - and even that much had come nearly 24 hours after we'd begun making inquiries.
Yet, during that time and even before, a lively conversation had grown up on social media, including claims - and expressions of alarm - that a body had been found on nearby school property. When we sought information, police eventually provided a press release with no specific information about whether the man had been found on school property and little more detail than a cursory note that a thorough search had found "no threat to any surrounding areas," a now-common phrase in various forms in police "news" releases that generally equates to, "Nothing to see here, folks. Just move along."
Which we, by the way, are more than happy to do in such circumstances. Contrary to what is often our reputation, we are not interested in dissecting a person's private trauma in public to attract readers' morbid curiosity, and we particularly strive to be sensitive about reporting information that has no direct value to the public but may give dangerous ideas to other troubled individuals.
Yet, natural concern - as well as morbid curiosity - was plenty active on Facebook about this situation, so we felt a responsibility to bend our reporting policy and at least provide enough facts to dispel the misinformation and speculation that were mounting. Our Jake Griffin and Christopher Placek took on the assignment and produced a simple five-paragraph story we carried in print and online Wednesday.
News media get lots of criticism for judgments they make about whether to cover certain stories or how to cover them. And, those judgments will naturally vary from news outlet to news outlet, just as they vary from person to person.
But it's important to recognize that despite those variances, most organizations have standards and policies they follow regarding sensitivity, accuracy and public interest and helping readers know the sources of the information reported so they can judge the credibility for themselves.
On that latter point, for all the many virtues of social media's immediacy and vast network of users, their standards and their sourcing are extremely limited, sometimes outright non-existent.
Leading me to thoughts expressed in one of President Ronald Reagan's most familiar injunctions: Trust, but verify. Though in the case of social media, I might be inclined to modify the phrase slightly to "Don't trust until you verify."
And, yes, that modification can apply to traditional media as well, which is why you should always turn to various sources whenever you're attracted to controversial or alarming claims about any subject.
• Jim Slusher, jslusher@dailyherald.com, is managing editor for opinion at the Daily Herald. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jim.slusher1 and on Twitter at @JimSlusher. The ideas expressed in this column are his own and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Daily Herald editorial board.