Truth and objectivity are important elements in the media and should be practiced by journalists and media corporations. Truth is important to the public. Tickle (2006, p. 90) states that ‘journalists face the task of truthfully representing in words, numbers, sound, and pictures, events that have occurred at a particular time and in a particular place.’
An example is the documentary ‘Out Foxed’ as a case study, which is about Rupert Murdoch’s company News Corporation. The documentary portrays how on a daily basis, the News Corporation journalists have to follow the agenda of Mr. Murdoch. This removed truth and objectivity from their reporting. Mr. Murdoch was asking his journalists to be subjective and ultimately bias. This creates problems for the journalists because journalists have a responsibility to communicate truth to the public. As a consequence of Mr. Murdoch having an agenda, the public does not receive an honest ‘truth’. As Tickle (2006, p. 91) argues ‘news media producers reject claims that they cannot represent the truth in their news stories, while the cultural theorists say that it is futile to try to represent the truth because it is a situational and subjective construction of reality.’
News Corporation is not the only media outlet guilty of blurring the ‘truth’. Photographs have been tampered with changing an image and distorting the truth. This is usually done to sensationalise a story often found in celebrity magazines. This is also the case with footage being edited to show a particular point of view. An example is that Bill O’Reilly.
Journalists decide what the ‘truth’ of a story is by selecting which facts to include and those which need to be left out. This process of reporting the important facts should not misrepresent what actually occurred; just provide the most vital information, as Tickle (2001, p. 95) argues ‘journalists must also exercise their judgement; that is, they must select from among many choices the crucial elements of the story and structure it appropriately.’ Journalists should ensure that all their stories have balance and fairness.
Using words such as ‘allegedly’ can also warp the ‘truth’ of a story and journalists may believe that using such words are a protection from defamation, etc. A journalist should be clear and concise and provide many points of view. Journalists should ensure that the three stages of enquiry are covered and these are reactive reporting, analytical reporting and reflective reporting.
Tickle discusses the post-modern view of journalism stating that ‘for the post-modernist, all truths and assumptions must be continually subjected to direct testing with the understanding that knowledge is relative and fallible, rather than absolute or certain’ (2001, p. 92). Another post-modern perspective is that audiences create their own truths through the material they are presented with. Creating a universal truth is hard because everyone lives in a different social and cultural context. What one person accepts as true is what another person questions.
How would you define truth?
Do you think that journalists are truthful?
Reference:
Tickle, S 2001, ‘The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but…’, in S Tapsall & C Varley (eds), Journalism: Theory in Practice, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 89- 101.
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Friday, September 5, 2008
Friday, August 8, 2008
What is a journalist?
What is a journalist? This question, while it may appear simple, has many levels. It could be stated that a journalist does journalism and therefore a journalist is what it does. This is a circular notion which can continue to go around. Could, what a journalist is then be defined by journalism? So to define a journalist according to the activities they participate in would mean that they are the gatherers of news. However journalists no longer just gather the news. A contemporary journalist is required to be interpretive, analytical, creative and flexible when distributing the information they have collected to the masses. The term news is problematic because as the role of a journalist has changed so has the information they gather.
A major reason for the transformation of the media landscape in which journalists belong is due to the ‘rapidly changing technological environment’ (Tapsall and Varley 2006).
When logging on to The Sydney Morning Herald website the content and how the information was obtained has changed. There is more celebrity content than in the newspaper and a great deal of information is attributed to news services.
Has technology made contemporary journalists lazy? Is that a new definition for the professional journalists of our time? Yes and no. It could be argued that with the ease of access to information, that technology has made available, a journalist’s job is more efficient. Or that the quality is no longer there. No matter how this is viewed the journalism landscape is going through the motions of change.
The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (1999) define a journalist as:
Journalists describe society to itself. They convey information, ideas and opinions. They search, disclose, record, question, entertain, comment and remember. They inform citizens and animate democracy. They give a practical form to freedom of expression. They scrutinise power, but also exercise it, and should be responsible and accountable.
This definition of a journalist covers a wider range of elements that have to be taken into consideration. By incorporating democracy into the definition of a journalist it is remembering were the role of journalists began- with the Fourth Estate. Tony Harcup in Journalism: Principles and Practice discusses the fourth estate and its importance, ‘Initially referring to the parliamentary press gallery, the term became a more general label for the press as a whole, locating journalists in a quasi-constitutional role as ‘watchdog’ on the workings of the government’ (2004, p 2). The Fourth Estate is central to the freedom of the press, an integral part of journalism and therefore being a journalist.
The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance definition takes into account the macro world of the journalist and the activities they participate in while also including the responsibilities in society that journalists have. Journalists do have power. More power than they sometimes know what to do with. Journalists can choose to distribute information as well as with hold it. They must be able to decide what is newsworthy and hopefully in an ethical manner. Harcup discusses journalists having responsibility of information in the definition he provides, ‘Journalists have a more social role that goes beyond the production of commodities to sell in the marketplace. Journalists inform society about itself and make public that which would otherwise be private’ (2004 p, 2).
Another way that journalists can be defined is through the type of journalist they are. It is a mistake to generalise a contemporary journalist, although this has been the flow of this article to hopefully define what a journalist is. A contemporary journalist does not have to be associated with only being an investigative reporter. There are journalists to cater to the niche markets of sport, fashion, arts, culture and food to name a few. Types of journalists include broadcast, freelance and online among others. Suellen Tapsall and Carolyn Varley editors of Journalism Theory in Practice cover the wide range of tasks that journalists are required to do, ‘Journalists can be defined as information gatherers, news workers, reporters, entertainers, historians, researchers, explainers, probers, writers, communicators, storytellers, producers and presenters’ (2006, p 6).
Defining a professional journalist is an insurmountable task due to the ever changing media landscape. ‘Attempts to define journalists are made more difficult by the complex nature of their function and the huge diversity in news or pseudo news products, programs, and publications’ (Tapsall and Varley 2006, p 6). There are many definitions for a journalist found in the text books were one can study this very large industry. Each definition has important elements however what a journalist is could never be summed up in one sentence. What a journalist is contains so many elements on social, cultural and business levels that the simple question of what is a journalist becomes far harder to answer than just someone who gathers and disseminates information. ‘There is no longer – if there ever was – one colour, shape, or size of a ‘typical’ journalist’ (Tapsall and Varley 2006, p 6).
A major reason for the transformation of the media landscape in which journalists belong is due to the ‘rapidly changing technological environment’ (Tapsall and Varley 2006).
When logging on to The Sydney Morning Herald website the content and how the information was obtained has changed. There is more celebrity content than in the newspaper and a great deal of information is attributed to news services.
Has technology made contemporary journalists lazy? Is that a new definition for the professional journalists of our time? Yes and no. It could be argued that with the ease of access to information, that technology has made available, a journalist’s job is more efficient. Or that the quality is no longer there. No matter how this is viewed the journalism landscape is going through the motions of change.
The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (1999) define a journalist as:
Journalists describe society to itself. They convey information, ideas and opinions. They search, disclose, record, question, entertain, comment and remember. They inform citizens and animate democracy. They give a practical form to freedom of expression. They scrutinise power, but also exercise it, and should be responsible and accountable.
This definition of a journalist covers a wider range of elements that have to be taken into consideration. By incorporating democracy into the definition of a journalist it is remembering were the role of journalists began- with the Fourth Estate. Tony Harcup in Journalism: Principles and Practice discusses the fourth estate and its importance, ‘Initially referring to the parliamentary press gallery, the term became a more general label for the press as a whole, locating journalists in a quasi-constitutional role as ‘watchdog’ on the workings of the government’ (2004, p 2). The Fourth Estate is central to the freedom of the press, an integral part of journalism and therefore being a journalist.
The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance definition takes into account the macro world of the journalist and the activities they participate in while also including the responsibilities in society that journalists have. Journalists do have power. More power than they sometimes know what to do with. Journalists can choose to distribute information as well as with hold it. They must be able to decide what is newsworthy and hopefully in an ethical manner. Harcup discusses journalists having responsibility of information in the definition he provides, ‘Journalists have a more social role that goes beyond the production of commodities to sell in the marketplace. Journalists inform society about itself and make public that which would otherwise be private’ (2004 p, 2).
Another way that journalists can be defined is through the type of journalist they are. It is a mistake to generalise a contemporary journalist, although this has been the flow of this article to hopefully define what a journalist is. A contemporary journalist does not have to be associated with only being an investigative reporter. There are journalists to cater to the niche markets of sport, fashion, arts, culture and food to name a few. Types of journalists include broadcast, freelance and online among others. Suellen Tapsall and Carolyn Varley editors of Journalism Theory in Practice cover the wide range of tasks that journalists are required to do, ‘Journalists can be defined as information gatherers, news workers, reporters, entertainers, historians, researchers, explainers, probers, writers, communicators, storytellers, producers and presenters’ (2006, p 6).
Defining a professional journalist is an insurmountable task due to the ever changing media landscape. ‘Attempts to define journalists are made more difficult by the complex nature of their function and the huge diversity in news or pseudo news products, programs, and publications’ (Tapsall and Varley 2006, p 6). There are many definitions for a journalist found in the text books were one can study this very large industry. Each definition has important elements however what a journalist is could never be summed up in one sentence. What a journalist is contains so many elements on social, cultural and business levels that the simple question of what is a journalist becomes far harder to answer than just someone who gathers and disseminates information. ‘There is no longer – if there ever was – one colour, shape, or size of a ‘typical’ journalist’ (Tapsall and Varley 2006, p 6).
References
Harcup, T 2004, Journalism: Principles and Practice, Sage, London.
Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, 2008. Retrieved August 5, 2008, from http://www.gwb.com.au/99a/ethics.html
Tapsall, S & Varley, C (eds.) 2006, Journalism Theory in Practice, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
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