Institutional Gatekeeping is making a comeback on social media. Here’s why you should care.

By Bill Wedo, MBA, M.J.

“In a world where everyone is a publisher, no one is an editor. And that is the danger we face today.” Scott Pelley, 60 Minutes correspondent, former CBS Evening News anchor

Now, editing is making a comeback. Consider these recent developments:

• Twitter, for the first time, included fact-check labels for Tweets by President Trump, flagged Tweets by Florida Republican U.S. Rep Matt Gaetz for promoting violence and suspended the bogus "ANTIFA_US" account for ties to white nationalists.
• Snapchat stopped promoting President Trump in its showcase “Discover” section over his responses to racial violence.
• Facebook, although still refusing to issue warning labels or remove misleading posts, has at least launched a number of fact-checking initiatives, partnering with multiple third-party fact-checkers worldwide including news agency Reuters.
• President Trump, to keep the “I’m free to say anything” approach of his Twitter account, challenged attempts to moderate his posts by signing an executive order to curtail protections of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet companies from legal liability for content they host.

I see these as valuable moves to the return of systematic institutional gatekeeping. And, I see a good thing.

Long recognized in media circles, gatekeeping refers to the process of evaluating what will be published based on facts, context and the search for the truth. Historically, news media shouldered the burden, pointing to the expertise of its news gatherers, editors and editorial systems that strove for fairness and accuracy.

Of course, there are elaborate academic definitions of the process, such as this one from “Gatekeeping Theory” by communications researchers Pamela J. Shoemaker and Timothy Vos:

“Gatekeeping is the process of culling and crafting countless bits of information into the limited number of messages that reach people each day, and it is the center of the media’s role in modern public life. This process determines not only which information is selected, but also what the content and nature of messages, such as news, will be. “

Then, there’s the more utilitarian definition from Ronald D Smith’s public relations textbook, “Becoming a Public Relations Writer:”

 “In the end, it all boils down to this: News is what the gatekeeper says is news.”

And, as always, that has been the point of contention.

Gatekeeping has always been a toss-up, a double-edged sword. It has a tradition of amazing successes and astounding failures, ranging from the Washington Post’s historic Watergate coverage that brought down a corrupt president to the “we must present both sides” McCarthy-era coverage of the Red scare that claimed the reputations and careers of many innocent people.

In my case, it was a purple dinosaur.

 Truth be told, the world would have met Barney a lot sooner were it not for the media’s gatekeeping tradition and my role in it. Back in the late ‘80s, I was a Dallas Morning News assistant features editor. My duties included screening story pitches – those “please publish a story about me” requests. Back in that print news heyday, the Dallas Morning News circulation of more than 500,000 made getting published a big deal. Understand, story pitches far outnumbered print space and it was survival of the fittest. But, it was me – in consultation with other editors and reporters, of course - who decided what made it to print and what hundreds of thousands of people would or wouldn’t see. In the daily glut of story pitches and PR kits, I screened a VHS tape aimed at preschoolers. It featured simple songs, smiling youngsters and, yes, Barney.

For many reasons, Barney didn’t make the cut. No feature story was done. It would be several years before tykes sat entranced by the "Super dee-duper" dino.

Before you condemn me as the perfect example of gatekeeping’s failure, know that the initial tapes were not at all successful. It took a format reboot, and some good luck, before the series went on to PBS and merchandising success. (Note: TV Guide once listed Barney as one of the top 50 worst TV series.) The point is, I was using my inexact chemistry of 10 years of journalism experience, an English degree and a master's in journalism – including acknowledging my biases and considering my audience’s needs – to decide what was news.

Agreed, it was not exactly an earth-shattering decision. But, like Watergate, McCarthy and Section 230, in its own small way, Barney was central to the question of gatekeeping: Who the hell was I to say Barney wasn’t good enough? What gave me the right? Does such a system serve the general good?

For decades, creating and curating news coverage was central to any news media’s mission. For decades, gatekeeping was accepted and trusted by the public – though not always cheered.

That acceptance, that trust, has changed.

Gallup has regularly tracked Americans' overall trust in the media since 1997, fell to an all-time low in 2016. Confidence in the mass media still remains lower than the early 2000s, and much lower than when Gallup first measured it in the 1970s.

Many factors over time eroded the trust in gatekeeping. It started with increasing choices for news outlets spawned by the cable news revolution of the ’80s – see Fox News and CNN - as well as the rise of conservative talk radio.

The internet those fragmented audiences – and the greater array of news choices they offered – and changed everything. Suddenly, via blogs and social media posts, not only did everyone become a potential publisher, they became gatekeepers deciding what was news and how to portray it.

This wresting of news decision-making was initially cheered for adding new voices and perspectives. “In the first social era, the technologists building these platforms blindly prioritized making it possible to share any and all content, regardless of societal ramifications," according to Forbes contributor Kalev Leetaru. “The platforms proudly embraced popular characterizations of themselves as swashbuckling free speech pirates fighting the evil overlords of censorship.”

The problem was – and remains – that many of these gatekeepers have no training or systems to even attempt to counterbalance personal prejudices and lack of issue expertise to add context and ensure accuracy. Many don’t even seek to reach that goal. Add to that, algorithms that silo users from differing perspectives and lead to the “echo chamber” effect of hearing only what you believe in, and getting a fair, accurate picture is even more complicated. The audience now must do its own gatekeeping. However, individual gatekeeping can be very difficult. It requires ramping up your personal expertise in everything from foreign affairs to microecomics and routinely using some of the world's more than 100 fact-checking sites.

Do you do that? Does anyone? I contend that you have to find a trusted news source to begin to even begin to understand the world around you. That is getting tougher. As a Galllup poll notes, day-to-day it comes down to whom we trust to provide the information that each of us values. Which gatekeeper suits your needs? MSNBC? One America News? www.jihadwatch.org? www.rightwingwatch.org? The New York Times? The Washington Times?

So here we are. I say bring on the social media institutional gatekeeping, just establish the correct systems and the right people to do it. It’s always an imperfect system, but in the right hands and setting it’s still the most effective way of communicating.

For me, institutional gatekeeping provides a starting framework of news sources to trust. From that start point, I can still question and fact check, but a least I have a comfort level of knowing where the news source comes from without assuming each item is a lie. There are ways to find these trusted sources. Make your own choices.

Source: MarketWatch

Source:AllSides.com

You may think this reflects my own bias of being a journalist for three decades. And, you’re correct. That’s because my experience with institutional news gatekeepers showed them it to be largely effective. I’ve worked at local, regional and national newspapers, broadsheets and tabloids. I helped start Philadelphia’s premier online news outlet. What I saw, at each stop, day-to-day was a valid effort of news gatherers, editors and editorial systems committed to striving for fairness and accuracy to get to the truth. They didn’t always achieve that goal, but they almost always tried.

 Maybe that’s why I trust most major news organizations in their efforts. I’ve paid close attention over a long time, and they have earned my trust. But, I’m human. To avoid that echo chamber, and to gain new perspectives, I also routinely check in with those organizations that don’t strive for fairness and accuracy

Dr. Dannagal G. Young, associate professor of communication and political science at the University of Delaware, writing for Neiman Lab, the offshoot of Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, concludes:

 “There is no (italics hers) substitute for experts in a field, parsing information and serving as the arbiters of truth, and reifying our faith in a shared reality, a shared body of facts.”

I agree - with all due respect to Barney.