11-30-2017, 06:14 PM
(11-30-2017, 04:54 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: There was a thread by Wesley Lowery on Twitter, that I wanted to share to have a discussion.
common thread in many of these bad faith attacks on press are that they seek to exploit public's misunderstanding/ignorance of how we do what we do. for a long time I've thought media's biggest mistake is assuming our audiences understand journalism conventions/how we do our jobs
— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) November 29, 2017
That was the first tweet, I'll copy the text here below for a good chunk of the thread. But overall, this wa sa good conversation that went on even more than I'm posting.
So what do you think about this approach to this issue? How media-literate are we here? How many can explain the difference between a hard news piece, an analysis, an opinion piece, and editorial, etc.? We probably consume news more than many people, so we ought to know, but do you think our knowledge on this front could be improved? Do you think the misunderstanding of these nuances contributes to, or even causes, the animosity towards media, today?
There are a few reasons for this in my opinion. While I don't think partisan news is anything new I think the proliferation of ways to consume it has led media outlets to attempt to carve out a niche for themselves as a way of securing a market for their service. Fox definitely started this trend in the modern age and their success certainly led to emulation. Additionally, the same proliferation of media sources has led to a proliferation of people labeling themselves as "journalists". This has absolutely watered down the profession's image and the same factors I just listed have led many of these new "journalists" to circumvent, or entirely ignore, traditional journalism practices and ethics.
The journalist profession, properly conducted, is an admirable one. I think a few quick fixes would go a long way towards establishing more public trust in the profession and its product. I would advise all hard news agencies to do away with their editorial page entirely. The line has become so blurred in the recent decade that editorialism has bled into hard news stories. This further blurs the line, especially for the less discerning reader, as to what is an editorial and what is a fact based hard news story. An alternative would be to come to a profession wide agreement and have a universally agreed upon label, or border, on individual stories in the editorial section. This would have to be coupled with a firm commitment to dissuade editors from click bait titles or subtle digs/editorializing/leading language in hard news stories or it would all be a wasted effort.
Lastly, a way to discern professional journalists from your more amateurish types, such as bloggers, people with their own website, etc. There is a huge gap between the journalistic standards or a professionally trained journalist and a dude with internet access. You see the damage this does during protests, such as at the Trump inauguration. An amateur journalist was arrested as a participant. This type being lumped in with a person who grew up idolizing Woodward and Bernstein, and attending school to be a journalist, does a tremendous amount of damage to the profession's image. A professional standards board that discerned between the two would be very helpful in this regard. Just having an iPhone and being at an event does not make you a journalist and you shouldn't be allowed to credibly claim you are one because you have a blog.
