Sloppy Journalism is Now a Culture Norm.

AJ Davis
ad487710@ohio.edu

"Moral Reasoning for Journalists" by Steve Knowlton and Bill Reader pointed out that Western society has long upheld its moral code.  They pointed out that we justify what we are doing is good because that is what the rest of society is doing.  It has gotten to the point where journalism has suffered as a whole because of the cultural norm dictating it to be sensational.  Sites such as TMZ are more popular than CNN or Fox News.  The short stories, easy vocabulary and the overdramatic stories draw in a larger readership among young people than respected news outlets. 

Political Bias

The worst accepted cultural norm in journalism is political bias.  The reading made an excellent point that right-winged new outlets, such as Fox News, claim that the rest of the media business is a "liberal" media, while MSNBC points out at what a bad job Fox News is doing for being to conservative.  Both news outlets are in the wrong. They should not be focused on what the other is reporting, but doing their duty as journalists to report the news to the public.  For many people, these are their only source of news.  In fact one article even goes as far as claiming that viewers who turn into Fox News actually are less informed than those people who don't have any news sources.

Social Media is the Only Media

Another culture norm for us seems to be our obsession with social media.  Most of us are always on Twitter, in fact, we have to be for this class.  But is that really such a good thing?  When all your news is shortened to 140 character "tweets" are you getting the full story?  Is who you are following a reliable source?  So much emphasis is placed on connecting to your audience on social media, but here lies the problem.  Important news useful to the consumer is drowned out in useless knowledge and pictures of cats.  When every one with a Twitter claims to be right, how do you know which one actually is?  This is the reason the journalism industry should break away from the cultural norm and stop relying on social media.  News tweets get ignored for "Bobcat Makeouts" or "OU Confessions".  Why bother with the news when there are more entertaining options?

Courtesy of www.twitter.com @OU_Confessions

Courtesy of www.twitter.com @bobcatmakeOUts

The Glass is Half Empty...

It is a long shot to assume that political biases and social media will stop being important pillars for the journalism industry.  But by breaking these culture norms, it may lead to real journalism, instead of quickly put together, creating sloppy journalism.  Sloppy journalism is becoming our cultural norm, and as much as people seem to complain about it, they still talk about Miley Cyrus's VMA performance even though it happened a week ago.  It starts with us, future journalists, to take a stand to decide what the public truly needs to hear, not what it wants to.  Maybe one day those two will be the same, but for right now, we must unfortunately accept the cultural norm.