This reading I found interesting because it flashed back to a point in time where journalism was going through changes with this new communication technology. With the world as connected as it is now, its hard to believe reading the passage in the reading that discussed how news was transmitted through letters and could talk up to a week even to receive, let alone report. Its incredible how far technology has come and what even the communication through telegraphs created for the world. Especially during a time of war, it does not surprise anyone that the new technology was utilized. What caught my eye in this chapter was the author discussing the errors that came with the telegraph and using it as a new tool of communication.
There were messages misheard, and a stronger dependency on it that maybe should have been at the time. Comparing this with the attitude journalists had with the telegraph, its is understandable how in both situations there was an immediate rush to best make use of the telegraph and communicate important information to it. Especially after how slowly information traveled prior to this, news could be communicated and reported much faster than ever before. But with anything, its hard to say that the errors and miscommunication within the use of the telegraph wouldn't have happened. It was new, innovative and exciting so its understandable that there would be some trial errors as the fascination of the communication over wires grew. The interesting piece to this as well is that ever since then, there have been plenty of those moments with many new technologies throughout history.
I think that you bring up an excellent point. I will say that now it is funny to think that we make news out of the errors. I can't even begin to describe how many headlines, tweets or videos I have seen that highlight people's journalistic mistakes. It takes the phrase "turning one man's trash into another man's treasure" and makes it into "turning one man's mistake into another man's greatest accomplishment."
ReplyDeleteI like your comments on the idea of looking back on a time when the telegraph was considered new and exciting, and when a week was the standard amount of time it took for news to travel. It's really interesting to think about what that would have been like, especially having grown up around all these technological advances. Maybe we'd value the true substance of our news a little more, and less of it would revolve around irrelevant pop culture stories. What kinds of things would be filtered out if this was still how news got around today?
ReplyDeleteI like how you talked about how the telegraph and how society reacted to it. I could not imagine what life was like before technology and not being able to contact people instantly when not being with them. It's amazing to think about how far we've come with technology and the media and how much it takes part in our lives today.
ReplyDeleteI like your point about how society reacts to the new technologies and how fearful people are of how that technology will change their lives. This was true when the telegraph was invented, when the printing press was invented, and, now that all of the new digital media platforms, it is happening again. I'm anxious to see how people become fearful of the technologies that will be invented in the future.
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