Image: pexels.com/Anna Shvets Like many of us with gray hair (if any), I’d never heard of Josh Cauldwell-Clarke or Jason Riley before a few weeks ago. The social media influencers’ much-ballyhooed visit to Michigan stirred a lot of attention.
What happened afterward made me think about our modern relationship to the news.
Known as “Josh & Jase,” the British duo spent three weeks bouncing around both peninsulas. Their videos oozed with joy and astonishment at Michigan’s natural wonders, engineered marvels and friendly communities. They even used their notoriety to raise $34,000 for a nonprofit shelter for the unhoused.
Near the end of their tour, Cauldwell-Clarke suffered a painful back injury. He was briefly hospitalized. Now back in the UK, he posted a video saying the hospital had informed him of a data breach. Without authorization, hospital staff accessed his name, date of birth, home address, phone number, account number, reason for admission, and clinical details.
That wasn’t all.
“Staff members were entering the room I was in whilst receiving treatment and asking for selfies (there are witnesses to this), whilst I was under medication and in pain,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “And I’ve kept quiet about this, but to learn employees have accessed my personal private information for their own knowledge is not okay.”
My first reaction to Cauldwell-Clarke’s story was a wag of the head. Health care workers know better than this. Hospitals, clinics and care facilities take privacy laws seriously. Data breaches can cost people their jobs and impose severe penalties on organizations, not to mention huge lawsuits.
What would possess hospital staffers to throw out their moral and legal obligations like this?
Then I came across a seemingly unrelated item: Pew Research Center’s latest study on America’s complicated relationship with news media. In short, the study shows that while most people agree that being informed is a civic responsibility, few actually bother to do so. They absorb the news passively—whatever comes to them or they happen upon is, they believe, all they need to know.
Putting aside the implications of that attitude—which are horrifying—it means that today's trusted sources are far different from those in the past.
Once upon a time, a trusted source was the local newspaper that arrived each day, or the local TV broadcast hosted by people who lived in and knew the community. For society at large, there were journalistic powerhouses of print and broadcast that didn’t always get it right, but they did most of the time because they knew their job was critical to a free society.
Now that trusted source is a TikTok personality or Instagram influencer who may or may not have the experience, credentials or even desire to deliver accurate, meaningful information. Digital platforms have birthed more than a few solid journalists, but finding them demands effort—something most Americans aren’t willing to do.
Worse still, those who follow influencers can form what’s called a parasocial relationship. The follower begins to believe they have a personal, intimate connection with the influencer. That familiarity becomes so strong that …
… a hospital staffer might feel perfectly justified in nabbing a selfie with a hurting and doped-up patient of note, or looking up his data, because “we’re friends, so he won’t mind.”
The same thing happens in how many of us choose to be informed. Rather than gathering news from verifiable sources, lots of consumers turn to their favorite influencer or social media platform. Connect a seemingly benign pseudo-relationship to the lack of effort to seek out accurate news, and you start to see how easily one can lose the forest of truth for the scattered trees of error (or worse, deception). The Pew study doesn’t bode well for that changing anytime soon.
To be clear, I’m not criticizing social media influencers. Most of them aren’t pretending to be journalists—including Cauldwell-Clarke, who wanted to share his Michigan experience with his followers. It isn’t his fault that some people formed a bond that isn’t real, then used it as an excuse to act inappropriately.
My critique is aimed at a public that isn’t motivated to be informed, to search out what’s real and what isn’t, but to merely take the word of their idol at face value. This remains the biggest challenge to the Fourth Estate—and to our society.
Each of us embracing our civic duty to be informed and seeking out accurate, meaningful news will go a long way to changing that course.
What happened afterward made me think about our modern relationship to the news.
Known as “Josh & Jase,” the British duo spent three weeks bouncing around both peninsulas. Their videos oozed with joy and astonishment at Michigan’s natural wonders, engineered marvels and friendly communities. They even used their notoriety to raise $34,000 for a nonprofit shelter for the unhoused.
Near the end of their tour, Cauldwell-Clarke suffered a painful back injury. He was briefly hospitalized. Now back in the UK, he posted a video saying the hospital had informed him of a data breach. Without authorization, hospital staff accessed his name, date of birth, home address, phone number, account number, reason for admission, and clinical details.
That wasn’t all.
“Staff members were entering the room I was in whilst receiving treatment and asking for selfies (there are witnesses to this), whilst I was under medication and in pain,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “And I’ve kept quiet about this, but to learn employees have accessed my personal private information for their own knowledge is not okay.”
My first reaction to Cauldwell-Clarke’s story was a wag of the head. Health care workers know better than this. Hospitals, clinics and care facilities take privacy laws seriously. Data breaches can cost people their jobs and impose severe penalties on organizations, not to mention huge lawsuits.
What would possess hospital staffers to throw out their moral and legal obligations like this?
Then I came across a seemingly unrelated item: Pew Research Center’s latest study on America’s complicated relationship with news media. In short, the study shows that while most people agree that being informed is a civic responsibility, few actually bother to do so. They absorb the news passively—whatever comes to them or they happen upon is, they believe, all they need to know.
Putting aside the implications of that attitude—which are horrifying—it means that today's trusted sources are far different from those in the past.
Once upon a time, a trusted source was the local newspaper that arrived each day, or the local TV broadcast hosted by people who lived in and knew the community. For society at large, there were journalistic powerhouses of print and broadcast that didn’t always get it right, but they did most of the time because they knew their job was critical to a free society.
Now that trusted source is a TikTok personality or Instagram influencer who may or may not have the experience, credentials or even desire to deliver accurate, meaningful information. Digital platforms have birthed more than a few solid journalists, but finding them demands effort—something most Americans aren’t willing to do.
Worse still, those who follow influencers can form what’s called a parasocial relationship. The follower begins to believe they have a personal, intimate connection with the influencer. That familiarity becomes so strong that …
… a hospital staffer might feel perfectly justified in nabbing a selfie with a hurting and doped-up patient of note, or looking up his data, because “we’re friends, so he won’t mind.”
The same thing happens in how many of us choose to be informed. Rather than gathering news from verifiable sources, lots of consumers turn to their favorite influencer or social media platform. Connect a seemingly benign pseudo-relationship to the lack of effort to seek out accurate news, and you start to see how easily one can lose the forest of truth for the scattered trees of error (or worse, deception). The Pew study doesn’t bode well for that changing anytime soon.
To be clear, I’m not criticizing social media influencers. Most of them aren’t pretending to be journalists—including Cauldwell-Clarke, who wanted to share his Michigan experience with his followers. It isn’t his fault that some people formed a bond that isn’t real, then used it as an excuse to act inappropriately.
My critique is aimed at a public that isn’t motivated to be informed, to search out what’s real and what isn’t, but to merely take the word of their idol at face value. This remains the biggest challenge to the Fourth Estate—and to our society.
Each of us embracing our civic duty to be informed and seeking out accurate, meaningful news will go a long way to changing that course.
RSS Feed
