And I don't even like Star Wars that much

Technology is like the Force.

[Cue drawn out metaphor]

(Yes, I’m going to draw this metaphor out for as long as I can. If you don’t like Star Wars, relocate to a country where that sort of thing is accepted. Or skip to the next paragraph – whatever’s easier.)

Some people think technology is like a God. This is wrong, but it is a worldview that merits mention. People were equally confused about the Force. Like the Force, technology is a tool that forms a fundamental part of the universe. To act as if it’s not there is just going to get you blown up (like the Force). Like the Force, technology can be used for both good and evil.

This is true for society as a whole. You can look at the dark side of technology – the mountains of e-mails I get in my work account with titles ranging from the suggestive to the triple-X rated; the people who abuse the anonymity of the Internet for their own sick purposes; and MySpace, a travesty of web design.

Then you can look at the light side – the doctors who perform surgery from miles and miles away; the paralyzed who regain the ability to “talk”; the joy of Halo 2 with 15 of your closest friends.

[End drawn out metaphor.]

As it goes with society’s relationship to technology, so goes journalism. Technology is just like any other tool we have available to us. It allows the unethical to be an efficient unethical. Meanwhile, it gives the ethical journalist a chance to write stories our predecessors only dreamed of; to give readers unprecedented access to information and news as it happens; to educate our readers and then give them the tools they need to learn more on their own. In short, technology itself is neither good nor bad, but it can bring out either quality in a journalist.

One ethical minefield technology does present is the previously-qualm-less process of finding sources. With the Internet, a journalist can find any idiot to comment on any anything.

And it’s not good. To find a person to balance out a story these days takes only some artful Googling and a few clicks of the mouse. The source doesn’t need to be informed of the exact situation a person is reporting on, nor does the source have to be credible. With the Internet, we can find them, and a story that might have gone unpublished years ago now can be called “balanced,” and gain entry into the hallowed print product.

The idea of a plethora of sources for balance purposes alone, in fact, might be too narrow. In class we discussed the New York Times article that spoke of gay teens who seek support on the Internet. Fifteen years ago, a reporter would have tossed out a story on gay teens as impossible. After all, how would they have found a source? Now, a reporter can think up a story, no matter how sensational or sensitive, and find a source ready and willing to speak.

At issue are our ethics, and only our ethics. Where does each journalist, individually, draw the line? Complicating matters is the generation gap in newsrooms. Older, more Luddite-sympathetic editors might see the ability to track down gay teens as a sign of a tenacious reporter. Within our generation, though, we know it takes only a willingness to exploit the tools we have at our disposal. Whether it’s right or wrong, I can’t say, but it’s a story I, myself, wouldn’t feel comfortable tackling.

That said, I see few drawbacks to technology. We are an industry that deals in information. This is the Information Age. We should be comfortable here. And if we’re not, we should follow those Star Wars nay-sayers to a land far, far away.

Technology allows us to double- and triple-check our facts in record time. It allows us to verify claims by sources that previously would have run with only a spell check and grammar change. It allows us to go beyond our narrative-style descriptions, giving our readers a video, an audio-clip, anything that can help flesh out the characters in our stories even more. It allows us to stop cutting 125-page legislative bills down to two inches for a brief on Page 6; the Internet, after all, has (virtually) unlimited space. The never-spoken-of ethics of deciding what does and does not make the daily cut go out the window: It’s all news now.

To act ethically in regards to technology is just like acting ethically in any other situation. It involves knowing where we stand on issues, and when we don’t know, finding out. The difference, I would argue, is that technology tests our ethics every day, all day. But as long as we are aware of it, I think our ethics should remain intact.