By Lesley Keays
Herald Columnist
The League of Women Voters of Seminole County gathered on May 21st to ask difficult questions not to be answered easily or quickly.
Is democracy— particularly in local media— on life support in Seminole County? If so, can it be resuscitated?
League President Cathy Swerdlow opened the event. Seminole County School Board Chair Robin Dehlinger was present, as were Congressional hopeful Bale Dalton and Charline Santos, a Lake Mary native in the running for Seminole County Commission.
A convincing troika of Judith Smelser, President and General Manager of Central Florida Public Media, Megan Stokes, Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Oviedo Community News, and Lin Green, media expert and author of the memoir, “Enough with the Secrets, Mama!” led the discussion.
When asked by Green what role the individual plays in social media, Smelser answered, “What role you play is very simple. Think before you share. It’s easy to see something on social media and think, ‘Yes, I agree with that; it’s really important’, and hit repost. Where did it come from? Did the place it came from have an agenda? Do you need to go do some fact-checking? Just take a breath.”
“There’s misinformation and there’s disinformation,” Smelser explains. “They’re both harmful. Disinformation is obviously malicious. Misinformation is information that is not true. Maybe it was a mistake; maybe it was unintentional. There are many independent creators on social media right now. Many of them are well-meaning. But fact of the matter is, they are individuals. We are all human.”
“The difference between that person and our newsrooms is that they lack editorial rigor that our content has to go through before it ever gets published or broadcast.”
“You could be somebody with the most integrity in the world,” offers Smelser. “But you make a mistake and you don’t have another set of eyes or set of ears looking over your shoulder, fact-checking and doing due diligence. All our stories have to pass through by policy, before any of you see or hear them. That’s the difference.”
“With the shuttering of the Seminole Voice, East Orlando Sun, and the Winter Park/Maitland Observer, Seminole County was a news desert before we launched Oviedo Community News in 2021,” shares Stokes. “We decided to focus on audience listening. We spent nine months asking people what they needed and how they liked to get their information so we could create a newsroom responsive to the community.”
“Can anyone guess the number one way people were getting their information in Seminole County in 2021? Facebook,” notes Stokes.
“There are checks and balances that we follow,” declares Stokes. “We are giving you information that you will use to make important daily life decisions. The onus is on us to earn your trust.”
Green confirmed that there has been a public decline in the trust of news sources. She queried Smelser and Stokes on how one can rebuild trust in the press.
“No matter which side of the aisle you are on, we as a nation, and probably within our communities, are not operating from a starting point of trusted, shared facts,” asserts Smelser.
“In my organization, we wrote in our mission
that we envision a region united by trust and facts. It doesn’t mean we think the same way or vote the same way,” concludes Smelser.
Smelser and Stokes are Chair and Co-Chair of a planned independent news collaborative summit. Stay tuned.
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