Week 8: Truth & Objectivity: Post Modern Casualties or Victims of PR Piracy?

(Meta, 2009)

Journalists, without a doubt, have a moral responsibility to play in the society. What they write inform their readers of an event, the society or even the world. News are influential to many; the impact may be far reaching to the extent of shaping perceptions, mindsets and behaviours of them. This thus explains the need for a credible and upright news media to report on the various issues, correctly and objectively.

Tickle (2001) stated that the two most important role of a journalist would be to interpret reality as honestly as possible for their audience and create a commonality of understanding for the public. News clearly should contain truth and objectivity, yet, the challenge of news writing often arise as the understanding of these two aspects - truth and objectivity, often vary from one person to another.

There may be thousands of books and journals that discussed on this aspect of journalism; theorists may even put forward a list of factors that affect truth and objectivity - religious convictions, philosophical convictions, personal integrity, lack of time, technology etc., thereby encouraging journalist to pay extra attention on these factors to ensure truth and objectivity in their reports. Yet, in the real world out there, theories do not fit nicely into actual practice; there are certainly grey areas are often debatable.

Some (Bowman, L. & McIlwaine, 2001) propose the need for journalist to stick to a three-stage enquiry process, encouraging journalists to participate in reactive reporting, analytic reporting and reflective reporting to ensure comprehensiveness, truth and objectivity of their writings. Nevertheless, in the modern news media where there is an intense competition over the speed of message transmission, perhaps sacrificing speed for the sake of paying more attention to the comprehensiveness, truth and objectivity of news is way too idealistic.

Moreover, news media may have other bigger concerns, be it for commercial gains or, like in Singapore, to support the government in bringing harmony to and begetting progress for the society. To demand for absolute truth and objectivity in journalism, are we being over-demanding?

Reference

Bowman, L. & McIlwaine, S. (2001), The Importance of Enquiry in Journalism: Theory in Practice, by Tapsall, S. & Varley, C., Oxford University Press, pp. 102-111.

Meta, P. 2009. Truth in News Media. [Image] Available from: http://blog.metaprinter.com/images/qqxsgWalterCronkite.jpg [Accessed 30 June 2011].

Tickle, S. 2001. The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but…, in Journalism Theory in Practice, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne.

Week 7: Privacy: Where Do You Get It?

(Cartoon Stock, 2007)

It has been a long debate over which should be of higher importance – the public’s right to know or individual’s right to privacy. Journalists, especially, are often caught in an ethical dilemma while performing their day to day task – news writing. Since a journalist is primarily responsible to the readers, listeners and viewers who have the right to know what is happening in society, invading into privacy of other individuals for the sake of reporting on the truth would seem highly justifiable.

But, what exactly is public interest? Like McQuail (1992) had mentioned, public interest matters may be simply issues that cater to the public’s curiosity, nevertheless, it can be mean issues which the public have a right know, a share in or an expectation of benefit from knowing. Apparently, in situations where journalists are found to have invaded into privacies of others, reporting on issues that that merely interesting to the public and not of genuine interest to the public may seem less justified on ethical grounds.

Yet, is being ethical really an important aspect journalists, or even readers, are concerned over? Perhaps media, being a business struggling to thrive in the intense competition after all, tend to be more interested in selling papers and making profits. Although many may have realised the trend of tabloidisation of media and softening of hard news (Boczkowski, 2009), few are aware of the threat that comes with this unhealthy trend of journalism.

The blooming paparazzi culture and tabloid news business over the years are indications of news media professionalism giving way to the mere curiosity of the public. Since tabloid news media are not aimed at being the fourth estate for the nation or live up to being ‘balance and fair’, the increase tabloidisation of news media encouraged an increase tendency of journalist digging into private lives of public figures to appeal to the prurient curiosity of its readers.

Of course, it would be too idealistic to expect a media to be extremely morally upright and only report on news that are of genuine public interest. I guess journalist ought to remind themselves that even the most legitimate public interest may turn out to be insensitive public prurience when the intention of invasion of another individual’s privacy is for the nosiness of the people, and not exactly for an educative or interest-informing purpose.

Reference

Boczkowski, P. J. (2009), 'Rethinking Hard and Soft News Production: From Common Ground to Divergent Paths', Journal of Communication, 59, (1), 98 - 116.

Cartoon Stock. 2007. Public Interest. [Image] Available from: http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/lfo/lowres/lfon196l.jpg [Accessed 23 June 2011].

McQuail, D. (1992). Media Performance. Mass Communication and the Public Interest. Sage, London.

Week 5: We’re All a Twitter!

(Laremy, 2010)

In the present fast-moving world of ours, speed is one of the key factor newsreaders demand for in news media. Online news has long been argued to be a more efficient source of news due to it being seemingly able to provide more updated news to its readers, whereas the mainstream print or broadcast news were only able to provide updates of information periodically. Today, with the rapidly increasing popularity of the various social media tools, online news have clearly advance to a new era; it is no longer provides just faster update of news, but rather, an almost immediate update of news.

Moreover, social media increases interaction between journalist and readers . Mainstream papers and online news websites may have allowed readers to air their views via forum pages or columns, however, only selected feedbacks are published and these published comments usually underwent moderations by the editors. Social media on the other hand, like Twitter for instance, allow comments to be instantly tweeted and shared to the world.

The power of social media comes from its speed of information transmission (Tapsall & Varley, 2006); nevertheless, the speed element is often a major peril too. Inaccurate information being released on these social media platforms often spread like wildfire instantly, and are difficult, or rather, impossible to retract.

Also, with the increasing popularity of social media, not only do newsreaders via social media increase rapidly in numbers, sources of information increase simultaneously. Citizen journalism is promoted with this free platform, in terms of both money and freedom, thereby signifying a major threat to the credibility of news available online (Hermida, 2010). Publishing news via social media platform clearly does not require professionalism of a journalist - it only requires an internet connected and social media account.

Advancement of communication and Internet technology thus has not only demanded journalist to equip themselves with knowledge of the different new media forms, readers have to also be social media savvy enough to source for the right and credible social media new sources for information.

Reference

Hermida, A. 2010, Rethinking the Role of the Journalist in the Participatory Age. http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/07/rethinking-the-role-of-the-journalist-in-the-participatory-age190.html. Sourced 03/09/10.

Laremy, L. 2010. Twitter Response. [Image] Available from: http https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-E4QseyhfXz0/TgCmWQUzsdI/AAAAAAAAA94/3us30bvXPHY/my%252520response.png [Accessed 29 May 2011].

Tapsall, S. & Varley, C. (2006). Journalism Theory in Practise. Oxford University Press, London.

Week 4: Globalisation v Localisation

(Buhbing, 2005)

there is nothing bad about sharing a truth across the world

but well... THE TRUTH?! WHO DEFINES IT?

The advance Internet and communication technologies have granted media with the power of global influence. Not only do global readers get to access to the news report from any media almost-readily via the Internet, various media ‘superpowers’ are known to have ‘invaded’ into local news, creating a prevalent worrying phenomenon of the Globalisation of news. We, the global audiences, acquire similar, if not the same, information from these media giant, and are likely be influenced the same way, thereby turning the world into a global village.

Due to increasing competition from various relatively new news media channels, in particularly through the online mode, as well as the increasing commercialization of media environment, many smaller news organisation or ‘forced’, in one way or another, to work with transnational media ‘superpowers’ (Breit, 2001). Yet, despite arguments and debates over the need for a diversity of news so as to provide a more comprehensive and multi-perception of news reports, the impact of globalization of news might not be gravely negative, at the very least, we are given the privilege of knowing more about the world. 

Especially for relatively smaller media corporations like Singapore Press Holdings, as compared to large western media giants, it is practically impossible for the organisation to send its correspondent to every single part of the world, and hence with global news agency, it allows a greater part of the world to be covered in the papers (Thussu, 2006). Moreover, in the field of, say, entertainment industry, highly dominated by the US, a globalised network of news media allows a more ‘credible’ and more coverage of these news of interest to be transmitted to all parts of the world at amazing speed (of a click).

(MediaChannel, 2008)

Yet, the need for localisation of news cannot be neglected. Large global news resources may have overtaken the efficiency of foreign correspondents of local news corporation, yet, foreign correspondents is still significant – to look at an international event in the eyes of the local and to bring out issues that may not be seen as important in the eyes of the other nationalities but are deem as public interest to the locals.

Just like the famous SpiderMan quote, ‘With great power comes great responsibility’. Journalists, in this age of journalism being increasingly shaped by the globalisation of media, now have to account for larger and more complex global responsibilities. The Internet, being one of the greatest sources of news for journalist, may have lessened the tasks f journalists, yet the true challenge of journalism in the present society is the responsible and effective use of such global news resources. 

Reference

Breit, R. 2001, ‘Journalism in the Global Village’, in S Tapsall & C Varley (eds), Journalism: Theory in Practice, pp.213- 231, Oxford University Press, New York.

Buhbing. (2011, April 25). Globalized News Project [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGNTMtEZ970

MediaChannel. 2008. Ultraconcentrated Media. [Image] Available from: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGK7zofkAoRtq-ONoxCng2qRZ76QDpD8QNkJqNMd6fnXtKuP53ioufTSXPZXoFmotxaH_GcGytURYD3-NsHnrrQpxt_LBWRBEb9ZEHt1HYUWPi35kYGBUpA3Ws80TL3SOmc_55PDwpMZvE/s1600/mediamoguls.jpg [Accessed 29 May 2011].

Thussu, D. K. 2006, International Communication: Continuity and Change, Hodder Arnold, London.