Journalism And The Internet

"So John McCain doesn't use e-mail or look at websites," wrote Naomi Lakritz in last Sunday's Province ("It's good to see there are folks out there holding out against the web," July 20 2008, reprinted from the Calgary Herald).

Just as a brief aside, I hate it when people start a column or letter with the word "so." It always makes me think of Boris Badunov. "So moose und squirrel zink zey can stop me, do zey?"

Lakritz goes on to kvetch about the Internet for a while, and it occurred to me, not for the first time, that journalists as a general rule STILL seem to be surprisingly clueless about the modern realities of the Internet. And they tend to write stories assuming that we the public are as ignorant as they are. I have no particular explanation for why, exactly, journalists as a class should be more naive about the web than the general public (I would certainly welcome any insights from others). I simply wish to defend the claim.

Lakritz writes:

McCain does not spend half his life deleting newsletters from various organizations that have added him to their mailing list without his permission -- newsletters that say "click here if you no longer want to subscribe."

Then when you click "here," while grumbling that you never subscribed in the first place, nothing happens. And the annoying newsletters just keep coming.

Before the word "Luddite" forms on anyone's lips at this point...

Actually, Ms. Lakritz, "Luddite" wasn't the word that came to mind.

Mostly, I was wondering how it's still possible for anyone over the age of twelve NOT to know that you never reply to spam! I think most of us understand that the point of spam isn't just to get people to buy things, it's also to harvest email addresses, which can then be sold to other spammers. Replying to them only tells them that they've got a live one.

Personally, I think the problem of spam tends to be overplayed. I got my very first email address all the way back in 1994 -- a Hotmail address that I signed up for from a public library terminal (ironically, a twelve-year-old boy taught me how to use it). I still use that same address today, and I receive...oh, maybe ten pieces of spam a week. This, despite the fact that this is the email I use specifically for 'unsafe' uses, like when a website requires you to post your address.

Know how I cut down on spam? I DON'T OPEN IT! If I don't know the sender, or if I don't know exactly what the subject refers to, I just delete. So when I see a journalist devote column inches to complaining about all the emails she gets from "sexy Russian ladies" (is zat you, Natasha?), I tend to flit blithely past the word "Luddite" all the way to "idiot."

Meanwhile, the Vancouver Sun website boasts of the blogs maintained by its columnists, which turn out to be little more than online versions of their latest columns. Does anyone want to lay odds on how many of these reporters would have the foggiest clue about how to set up their own blog? For the record, it's not difficult.

Nor is this the only way journalists display a surprising lack of understanding of cyberspace. When they write about file-sharing for example, they frequently show that they don't understand the difference between a website and an application. When they write about online predators, they'll cite websites like Facebook, which have safeguards up the wazoo, and ignore applications like mIRC, which allow anyone to talk to anyone, with complete privacy and total anonymity. When the police set up stings by going online posing as kids, they're not using Facebook, they're using mIRC. Why don't journalists know that?

Let me remind you quickly of an earlier point: I've had email since 1994. The Internet has been around for a while now. But journalists still write about it as though it were new. Every time I see one of those "Are Your Kids Safe Online" stories (and they run them every couple of months; journalists are nothing if not effective recyclers), I always think the same thing:

"Why hasn't it occurred to journalists yet that a lot of the parents of these kids grew up chatting online themselves?

But where the Internet is concerned, that's journalists for you.