Fallout from the Jobs Debacle

Well I happened to find this in the Miami Herald, an article written by Edward Wasserman that goes into detail about how the new generation of the media is both a blessing and a curse. One of the questions he asks, in relation to the Steve Jobs fiasco earlier this month “is CNN on firm ethical ground nurturing, promoting and lending its immense prestige to a site whose content it does nothing to ensure conforms to even minimal standards of accuracy?” Also in the article, Wasserman is arguing the points that someone, an undergrad from NYU who blasted the teaching of a professor in one of her courses, who posted on the MediaShift blogrun by PBS.org, violated the code of ethics many journalists, by not identifying herself as a reporter for anyone, and then posting her findings on MediaShift.

He does make a very good counter argument in his article stating that how would this be any different than say if a teacher that was teaching the class and reported on a similar site about the problems he has with his students (Wasserman), and in a way I see exactly where he is coming from with that analogy. The fact that the girl is doing this without approval or endorsement of the professor himself or the university of which she is a student at definitely gives some credibility towards the Professor’s comments. However, the only way it seems in this society to get any case of information is to have those that are imbedded in certain situations. I will say that it doesn’t seem to me that a student at New York University would all of a sudden type inflammatory, unsubstantiated claims about their class and the teaching therein.

True there are sites like ratemyteachers.com , but I site like that can have any kind of comments made, and who know whether or not they are substantiated. Someone who had a bad experience about the teaching on the class can go into there and just put any random comment on there, and depending on who the guy talks to, rumors could easily get spread about the teacher in question. I don’t think that Alana Taylor, the undergrad from NYU in question, would stoop so low to post inflammatory remarks about teachers, but I think like any student she would want people to know the disappointment is from someone who takes a class on “Generation Y” and it isn’t up to what she think its potential could be.