The Role Of Conventional Journalism And Citizen Journalism

The thundering sound of the bomb blast could be heard for miles. Men, women, and children run frantically in order to find shelter, being blinding by the massive amounts of dust that have caused the sky to turn yellow. Mothers are scavenging for their children, who were playing games outside, now stuck deep in the rubble of buildings that have collapsed on top of them. Houses have been destroyed, families have been obliterated and innocent lives have been lost. For many around the world, situations like these have become a part of everyday life. In A Pure, High Note of Anguish, author Barbara Kingsolver describes the confusion and questions that arose after the terrorist attacks in New York City on September 11th. 9/11 was the largest terrorist

Objective journalism in the United States should be reconsidered to accommodate the demands of varied audiences and increased media outlets. With the media growing in magnitude and influence, many people are looking for fresh, like-minded news sources. Declines in newspaper readership and television news viewing among many Americans suggests that objectively reported news is a failing philosophy. Younger, more impressionable people may be ready for the advantages of the partisan news reporting style.

“It was never good enough to throw our hands up in horror that people were dying … We had to work out why – to chase the story back to its roots, and write about its origins fearlessly, even if it turned out that the ultimate beneficiary of the people’s suffering was a politician or a proprietor who had power over your own livelihood, or even your own life. A journalist’s right to investigate was not God-given: it was earned by playing one’s part responsibly in guarding the values of human society.”

”The world is not responding to events in this country, but rather to the description of these events by news organizations. The key to understanding the strange nature of the response is thus to be found in the practice of journalism….” (Friedman, 2014)

Excluding events that happen through a disaster, leads to a falsification of the disaster and allows the viewer to continue to ignore the severity, as discussed earlier. In Chris Vanderwees’s article, Photographs of Falling Bodies and the Ethics of Vulnerability in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, he states, “censorship is never a viable suggestion and only leads to ignorance and repression, ultimately obscuring the historical record of any given event” (Vanderwees 179). Through the repression of images like “The Falling Man,” and others that are considered too graphic, the realistic aspect of the disaster is tainted and is not expressed to the truest form. This continues to provide viewers with Kaplan’s idea of “empty empathy” (Kaplan 93-95). However the exposure of these “taboo” images forces viewers to comprehend the reality of the attacks at a more personal level. Vanderwees continues in his article, stating that although the images of falling bodies is contextualized differently among individuals, they collectively bring what had been repressed back into the reader/viewer’s consciousness (Vanderwees 181). Through the use of these images, viewers are more capable and inclined to stop repressing the reality of what occurred. Rather then looking at the September 11th attacks as an attack on The World Trade Center, the

Have you picked up a newspaper or magazine in the last few weeks? Then you have been enjoying one of the first amendment rights. Journalism in the United States has changed over time. These changes have affected society.

In my opinion, Billionaires’ Tea Party does not meet the journalistic norms of objectivity and separation of reporting from advocacy. The producers of this movie have a clear agenda, which is to expose the Tea Party as an organization full of ill-informed and extremely biased Americans who are hypnotized by some of America’s wealthiest businessmen into believing that liberals in American government are seeking to limit their constitutional rights. The director inserts his own political bias into the film, asserting that “most people, myself included, are naturally suspicious of government”. Toward the end of the film, the director states “my only message to them is to be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.” The director clearly states his purpose for producing the film, and does not film this documentary from a third-person perspective. The director defies the norms of objectivity not through his investigative work, such as going undercover at a rally, but by explicitly stating his suspicion.

The morning of June 13, 2000, I heard on the radio there had been an explosion with an unknown number of victims and deceased. Over the course of the day, pictures and videos of the aftermath emerged showing the horrific extent of the damage.

Above all, a journalist’s job is to seek the truth, and report it to the public. Occasionally a journalist will act deceptively in pursuit of that truth, causing for some of the most famous cases of undercover journalism—see Nellie Bly and PrimeTime Live—as well as the most infamous—James O’Keefe (Marx). When discussing undercover journalism, we must pose the question: can undercover journalism also be ethical journalism? And, regardless of the previous answer, is it ever justified? I will address both of these questions through the analysis of Shane Bauer’s 2016 Mother Jones’ piece on private prisons.

A third claim is that while economic and political factors establish the broad context for press performance, it is journalistic norms and practices historically emerging out of a particular national journalistic field that directly shape news content and form. As Bourdieu insists, a field is a “microcosm with its own laws ... [which is to say] that what happens in it cannot be understood by looking only at external factors.” A field’s “rules of the game” are established when the field is founded, and once “routinized” tend to persist over

The duty of journalists is to tell the truth. Journalism means you go back to the actual facts, you look at the documents, you discover what the record is, and you report it that way. — Chomsky 2008

The media and the public have had a relationship that has existed for centuries. Through the media, people become aware of events and issues occurring around them. As a result, they make educated decisions. Therefore, the media serve as witnesses of the events happening within our societies and then report them to us. That said, could journalism have a significant political impact in our societies? It is through the media that governments and their citizens communicate. For instance, people communicate by protesting and voting, governments respond by amending the issues affecting the public. It is also through the media that potential political leaders gain recognition. Therefore, the answer is yes, because, journalism causes the spread

In a contemporary society, the role of journalism is a varied one that covers many different aspects of people’s lives. As more and more outlets spring up around the world, many more stories are able to be covered by different outlets, and this means that journalism takes on a more and more important role in a contemporary society. Much of our lives centre on political and social happenings, and journalistic outlets are the public’s way of finding all the information on these event. Journalism also provides us with a way of finding out which of these stories are important and deserve our attention, and which stories can be ignored. The important role of journalism can be well observed in the recent coverage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) in both New Zealand and around the world. This is a ground breaking economic deal, and holds a great deal of importance for the 800 million citizens of the countries involved, as well as the rest of the world. With worldwide coverage of this deal, it is inevitable that different types of reporting occurs, and that different outlets will provide different accounts. With so many different journalism outlets around the world and locally, many have to have a way of standing out from the crowd. This means that some extremely different coverage of very similar stories can occur. However it can also simply be down to different ownership, differing political views, and different socio-economic environments. Two outlets with

The belief that journalism is in decline has triggered major alarms, because society needs an informational environment that is easily available to all citizens such as newspapers. There is a large body of journalist that suggests that if television has taken over from the press as our main source of news this may limit our capacity to learn about public affairs; newspapers are believed to be far more effective than television at conveying detailed information necessary to understand complex and detailed issues. There is also widespread concern that if journalism fails as a profession it will not be able to reach large sections of the community, particularly younger or less educated readers. This may reinforce a growing gap among citizens between the information that they receive.

Contemporary social movements such as Arab Spring and Kony 2012 use the Internet and social media as potential tools towards change. But why are some more successful than others. This paper argues that when news outlets see the potential for change, they “premediate” (Richard Grusin) its possibilities, and make that change ever more possible in their coverage. On the other hand, extant stories that are more reactionary do not get the same amount of new exposure, and remain static. In other words, our media - not just social media, but news organizations - play a great role in shaping current events. I will compare and contrast the unfolding of the Arab Spring story, and how little changed regarding Kony 2012, as cases in point.