Since its release in April 1976, All the President's Men has become THE must see film for aspiring journalism students. Giving a look inside the breaking of one of the biggest stories in US history, that lead to the only President to ever resign, the film showed the process of interviewing sources, corroboration, and a willingness to print stories that would receive hatred and backlash. But these men did what was necessary to find the truth. One of the biggest parts that stuck with me was when Ben Bradlee refused to run the information that came from Deep Throat without a second source. This impacted me in the sense that, up until that point, I hadn't considered the idea of a news source might not tell the truth. (I was young, give me a break) But having two unrelated source giving the same information would be a much better barometer for what is true, so this policy made sense.
In the last decade, we have heard from the big, mainstream media how internet journalism isn't REAL journalism. They always held themselves to a higher standard and I assumed that the reason for this thought was that anyone could post anything on the internet, but that media like newspapers, magazines, and television news had oversight to make sure that everything printed is the truth. Of course, the reality is more grey then that. Now, television resembles the net, where every Tom, Dick, and dumbass can spout any garbage they wish and call it truth and print media has had more then it's fair share of issues, but they still held to this lofty position that traditional journalism is better the the internet. All of that changed on January 24th 2013.
