Why Journalism Matters

This link is pretty far afield of what we normaly cover, but Susan M. Grant, the chief nurse for Emory Healthcare in Atlanta, wrote a column for the Washington Post about why the two Americans with Ebola were brought back to the country.

Why do we care? In talking about the social media reaction to bringing them to the United States, she said this:

Those fears are unfounded and reflect a lack of knowledge about Ebola and our ability to safely manage and contain it.

Part of our job as journalists is to make sure our communities have accurate knowledge upon which to make decisions. Right now, there are a lot of folks who, because of the free platform that entities like Twitter and Facebook provide, are spreading inaccurate information. How do we help our communities learn to discriminate between rumor and fact, between fear and knowledge?

That is one of the great challenges of our time.