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Analysis Of 'Cult Of The Amateur'

Decent Essays

In 1953, Davies set out to uncover the attitudes and behaviours of his colleagues at Fleet Street in search of the truth and reason. He found that the prestigious and well-respected newspaper was in fact blighting the public’s thoughts, values and understanding of the world by enabling expert sources to place fictional information into the newspaper; allow racism and discrimination to openly exist within the newsroom and dictate what stories would appear on the news agenda and the angle that they would take; and break the law by hiring detectives and private detectives to steal information to bulk up the news agenda and fill their news agenda. This brutal reflection of the journalistic profession reveals that whilst it portrays its external image as one that is based on its professional code of conduct and operates on the basis of accuracy, equality and with the utmost …show more content…

As we can all label ourselves as authors, by creating our own web pages and blogs, and with the direct efficiency we can collect our information at, it is questionable as to how much of the web’s content is amateur and therefore lacking in authenticity and credibility. He warns that old media is a dying medium as the new media has been replaced by mass media through the likes of informational web pages such as Wikipedia that not only breed ignorance and publish incorrect and unconfirmed information, but social media channels such as YouTube that are equally as unwarranted by creating a new meaning for ‘entertainment’. Therefore, perhaps news has been blurred and masked as information that can be accessed through a variety of mediums created and written by anyone with the means to voice it. The four purpose of writing: to entertain, to persuade, to advise and to inform should therefore be emphasised to avoid entertaining, persuasive and advisory articles being projected as informational

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