3-2 Blog: Unrestricted Web Publishing

A grave and disturbing article was published in The New York Times yesterday titled “Utah Garage Cleaning Turns Up Boxes of Suffocated Infants” (2014). This particular article does not have any sources cited as references at the end of the article, however, that does not stop it from having what do seem to be credible sources through-out the article. Much of what is cited are witnesses or experts (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2010; Montecino, 1998). The witness are established as being credible because the authors explain how long the witnesses knew the family that lived in the home, and how much they interacted with the family (Dobner & Healy, 2014). Even more credible information is the quotes by one of the experts. The article names a chief of police and quotes him directly (Dobner & Healy, 2014). This created credibility just by the fact that he is a chief of police and thus would seem to have knowledge on this subject (Dobner & Healy, 2014; Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2010). Furthering that, a reader can actually check into the fact that he is actually a chief a police, which allows for more credibility (Dobner & Healy, 2014; Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2010). Finally, the other expert that is quoted is a doctor. He discusses how this type of crime can be caused because of mental illnesses (Dobner & Healy, 2014). The authors establish credibility for this doctor by explaining what his specialty is in and where he works (Dobner & Healy, 2014; Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2010). This gives the audience enough information to feel that they can trust this man’s opinion, and enough information for them to be able to search this and see if this man really does what the authors are claiming (Dobner & Healy, 2014; Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2010). Because of all of this, this article and the sources that it uses seems to be credible (Dobner & Healy, 2014; Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2010).

This article appears to be credible, but what about other articles? What would happen if there was unrestricted web publishing? In many ways it seems like there already is this because of the ability for people to post on blogs. Because of that “anyone, in theory, can publish on the Web” (Montecino, 1998). However, what if this was applied to all websites on the Internet? That would be difficult. It can be hard enough to establish what is fact and what is fiction on the Internet now. Virginia Montecino’s article titled “Criteria to Evaluate the Credibility of WWW Resources (1998) is an entire article written just to help people to be able to distinguish between fact and fiction on the Internet. 

There are currently places with more trustworthy information, for example The New York Times, however if there was completely unrestricted web publishing, then it would be almost impossible to establish what is fact and what is fiction (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2010; Montecino, 1998). An unrestricted web would cause information that is not fact to spread even further than it can currently, which would cause for an audience of uninformed or misinformed people (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2010; Montecino, 1998). Most audience members do not currently look into the sources of the information that they read so with unrestricted web publishing, it would be almost impossible for the correct and factual information to reach an audience or actually spread past that audience (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2010; Montecino, 1998).

Reference:

Dobner, J. & Healy, J. (2014, April 14). Utah garage cleaning turns up boxes of suffocated infants. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/us/utah-garage-cleaning-turns-up-boxes-of-suffocated-infants.html?hp

Kovach, B. & Rosenstiel, T. (2010). Blur: How to know what’s true in the age of information overload. New York: Bloomsbury, USA.

Montecino, V. (1998, August). Criteria to evaluate the credibility of WWW resources. Education & Technology Resources. Retrieved from http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/web-eval-sites.htm