News today isn’t what it used to be, and the role of the journalists who are reporting on the news is not the same either. The main reason for this, in my opinion, is the fact that technology has changed so rapidly, and social media has become the primary source for finding out the latest news.
While it’s nice not needing to buy a physical newspaper, or having to rush home to view the nightly news, our reliance on social media for information has resulted in sloppiness of reporting. For one thing, blogs and opinions surfacing online have become more common than credible news stories. When reading any given article, it can be hard to determine whether or not there is bias in the reporting, or if the information is based on facts over opinions.
I think that with every article posted, the reader should have the ability to click on the author’s name and see a list of the specific sources they used in the article, as well as their credentials. This would leave out a lot of questions about fact checking and credibility of the author.
Another problem with the news is that many publications and news outlets tend to glamorize people who do terrible things in our society. We make people into celebrities with the over-exposure of photos, interviews, etc. when they do horrifying things. The latest example of this that I can think of is the Rolling Stone cover that featured the Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnae. Just by looking at the cover, he could have been any beloved rock star or actor, when in fact he was a killer.
Along with glamorizing those who commit awful crimes, our news outlets tend to focus on soft news a lot more often than they should. It is likely that Miley Cyrus’ risqué VMA performance made more headlines than news of political importance, such as U.S. involvement in Syria. The line between what qualifies as news, and what is solely entertainment, has been blurred entirely. Unless we can make some distinction in what qualifies as news, the media will continue in a downward spiral, and the proliferation of soft news will make us much less educated and informed as a country.
Kandidly Kelly 