Two Forms of Journalism Recent events such as the tsunami disaster (where blogs helped in covering the enormous size of the story), the war in Iraq (where blogs help to present both opinions of all parties involved), the Dan Rather's scandal, a CBS Evening News anchor who reported as authentic a series of forged documents about George W. Bush (where blogs were highly instrumental in exposing him) have all contributed to the growing popularity of citizen journalism. So, why is there a recent growth in popularity of citizen journalism? Is it because of the scandals that has eroded the credibility of traditional journalism or is out of touch with today's media landscape? And does any of it eventually mean the decline of traditional …show more content…
Another incidence includes the fabrication and plagiarisms in numerous articles by Jayson Blair, a Times reporter, who was exposed in 2003 after his article: "After effects: The Missing; Family Waits, Now Alone, for a Missing Soldier", in which he incorporated passages from an article that was published earlier in The San Antonio Express.
Traditional journalism has also prided itself as being an objective source of media, but pure objectivity is just a mirage. The limitation of human nature causes us to be biased, as we all have opinions which we directly or indirectly express in our communication, Added to this the financial, time and area space causes journalism to be subjective to a certain degree. But, another question arises, is subjectivity, an expression of one's opinions, necessarily bad? After all opinions give meaning to facts. One may argue that the presentation of opinions in the media would preclude people from making their own judgments, but aren't peoply independent beings with a mind of their own?
However, from the standpoint of traditional journalism where the audience has a trusted relationship with the media source or media person it might not be such good idea to be subjective mostly because of the certain sense of loyalty of the audience member towards his/her particular news
Theodore Dawes is a writer and reporter from Alabama, he uses examples from the frustration of the people in view of the media, and but brings a better understanding to the process that reporter and editors have to go though in creating a story. He states that objectivity has no existence in news reporting, but journalists still provide the truth that it does exist. Reporters have only so much face time to provide a segment, how can they possibly provide multiple sides of a story and not expect to get all of the facts. Editors and reporter have to make difficult decisions including, the morality of the story and what facts they can possibly leave out. Even though it seems the media is only trying to persuade and pick sides in a story, this
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 perplexing time for The New York Times; a chapter, in their long-run, of fabrications that are now consider fabulists and egregious plagiarism. Hard News by Seth Mnookin, recounts the time a narcissistic and pedantic executive editor, named Howell Raines took took charged of the steering-wheel of one of the most reliable and prominent newspapers in the nation. It is described how Raines and other high-profiled and important figures for the paper, such as managing editor Gerald M. Boyd, dealt with the Jayson Blair’s scandal. The Jayson Blair scandal is about the terrible repercussions when plagiarism and fabulism is committed by a reporter. It not only tarnishes the reporter’s reputation but the newspaper’s transparency as a whole. I
Newspapers and other forms of news are very vital communication methods in the world today. The goal of news is to sell us their ideas by being biased and talking about how their idea is best. News can give us biased information although, the viewer could do further research on the
Despite several inaccuracies mentioned in his articles by a manager evaluator, Blair got another, but final promotion that would end his career, a regular staff reporter. At this point of Blair's career, he had over 700 articles published luring him into a life that consisted of all nighters, drugs and alcohol. With all these struggles Blair started to demonstrate noticeable changes around his workers in his responsibilities and attitude. After the attacks on 9/11, Blair was assigned to interview a witness. This is where one of his first plagiarisms began by giving the source a fake last name. Everything started to fall apart from here. Blair, to get out of some assignments, lied and said he lost his cousin at the Pentagon, misquoted Hillary Clinton, and wrote about events he was never at. This behavioral problem started to cause attention. "We have
The reality is that objectivity in reporting is impossible because the information is being filtrated through humans. Even if they try to be as objective and unbiased as possible they will still be making decisions regarding what to include and what not to. That states that every news outlet will be somehow bias, might be liberal or conservative, or maybe just trying to make the story more dramatic or appealing to the public. Most bias is unintentional, liberal reporters might happen to know more liberal sources or get around with mostly liberals.
The “roots” of bias in the media date back to the nineteenth century, and criticism about bias partly reflects a controversial idea about what exactly is the media’s role and purpose. Newspapers and television alike are suppose to exist to relay objective, factual information gathered and communicated by journalists and reporters.
Jayson Blair, former New York Times reporter was found guilty of committing acts of fraud and plagiarism for more the 600 articles he wrote in 2003 after 5 years. In his journey into journalism he went from raw intern to reporter. His colleagues and other public officials made the first allegations that his articles were fabricated. The investigation found he was lying about being at the scene of major events in history (Times reported,” 2003). It shocked a lot of people because he was a lead reporter for one of the biggest news articles in US (10 Years After Jayson Blair). The investigation went further and New York Times reviewed all his articles in depth. It was stated that Jayson Blair was not in the locations he describes in his articles. However, he made it seem that way. They found out he used his laptop and cellphone to
Objective journalism originated in response to yellow journalism. Objective journalism is reporting facts rather than opinions and presents both sides of the partisan debate. Objective journalism became the new norm of society and ultimately eliminated most of yellow journalism. With the development of cable television and FM radio, the news began to take a more partisan role and led to the increase of party polarization, which is the further divide between Republicans and Democrats. With the rise of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, the creation of “fake news” is becoming imminent. Today, news organizations are using the tactics of yellow journalism in politics to gain the attention of the audience and provide false facts that produce a major response from the viewers. Ideas and propaganda material are able to spread faster and to a wider range of people through social media. Much of this material is “fake news” that usually discredits one of the political parties, Republicans or Democrats. With the wide spread of this negativity toward one party, the opposing party strengthens its ideals and ultimately leads to increased party polarization.
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
Furthermore, sometimes this should not be the main goal of a journalist. Now, it is very important to distinguish what is objectivity and what is impartiality. Objectivity is unachievable. Impartiality is real. Objectively, objective could be only God. Journalists have to be dispassionate. «Impartiality is not the same as objectivity or balance or neutrality, although it contains elements of all three. Nor is it the same as simply being fair – although it is unlikely you will be impartial without being fair-minded. At its simplest it means not taking sides. Impartiality is about providing a breadth of view». Such thesis is published on BBC web-page. So how journalist can achieve neutrality, which methods should he (or she) use and when impartiality is
„h 80% believe that sensational stories get lots of news coverage because they are exciting, not because they are important.
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.
In this era, the popularity of citizen journalism has spread throughout all over the world. As a matter of fact, more and more people are starting to take benefit of content publishers. This can be seen in Television news, such as winter snow photos, traffic accidents or local sporting events. However, it leaves a question, what exactly is news anyway? What do you need to be a citizen journalist? What is its impact on today's fast-paced society? Basically, a lot of people think this is a great thing and it can be a good tool for promoting interaction between the media community and the community. There are pros and cons of citizen journalism, we need to face this issue critically and dialectically (Techopedia, 2017). On the one hand, citizen journalism has some benefits that professional journalism can not provide. Firstly, comparing with professional journalism, citizen journalism provides a wider range of news and fills the gaps in mainstream media. The main body of the dissemination of citizen journalism is ordinary citizens rather than professional journalists or professional media. People can through the Facebook, microblog,Twitter to publish news which happened around their life. Delicacy, beautiful scenery, sports events, entertainments, political commentary can be seen in Weibo, Twitter, Facebook and so on. Secondly, citizen journalism could stimulate the interest of audience. Most audiences enjoy reading