Social media changing how politics is reported

A state representative and a newspaper columnist have differing views on how social media has changed political conversations. State Rep. Mike Sturla (D-Lancaster) and The Patriot-News columnist John Micek discussed how they’re using social media during a session at PAR’s Public Policy and Political Affairs Seminar in Harrisburg this week.

Sturla said he has a “love-hate” relationship with social media. “It’s a huge advantage to get something first on social media but a lot of time is spent correcting what was written first. It’s a sad statement when people want to be first on social media and not necessarily right,” he said. “Politically, I think it’s important to get it right.”

Micek disagreed that with the representative. “At Pennlive, we don’t pull the trigger unless we know the information is correct. That would be bad journalism.”

Micek said social media is a tremendous news gathering and disseminating tool.

“The way we do our job has changed dramatically,” he noted. “It used to be that if you had a story one day ahead of the competition, you had a win. Today, if you have it 45 seconds before everyone, it’s a win.”

Using social media doesn’t change the principles that guide a journalist, according to Micek. “You don’t print things that you know to be false,” he said.

Micek finds Twitter to be a tremendously valuable tool in crowd sourcing a story. He’s able to collect opinions from a wide range of people through Twitter posts in a short amount of time.

Sturla commented that a positive benefit of social media is that it gives him access to many people that he wouldn’t have been in contact before. He added that Twitter’s limited word count makes it difficult to give any indepth coverage of legislation. “It’s hard to explain the details of a policy in 140 characters,” he said.

He added that social media has made the media quicker in its reporting. “I don’t think the rest of the world has caught up with it in the way we do business,” he said.

Editor’s note: Follow the speakers @RepMikeSturla and @ByJohnLMicek.