Hidden Agenda?

Allie Dosmann
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The survey over what is valued in journalism is something that journalists need to pay attention to, but only to an extent. The important thing to focus on is what people think journalism is lacking from an ethical standpoint.

The fact that 45 percent of people said that journalism is loosening its standard should sound an alarm to the entire population, not just journalists. As a citizen it is your civic duty to stay on top of what is happening in the world and, as almost half of the people questions think that they are receiving a careless update on current affairs, something must be changed.

There are certain things that should, however, be ignored. This article also discussed the statistics on the people’s appreciation for political bias. It stated that half of people think that journalists should express an ideological point of view. This is not what ethical journalism is about. While it is interesting to keep this in mind, allowing your bias to creep into your writing just for ratings is not right.

It is impossible to be completely unbiased – all journalists are humans. I think the biggest concern is the difference between a political bias and a political agenda. News outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post represent what I think is a political bias. They do express slightly liberal views in the way they display information. I think, in contrast, places like FOX have a political agenda.

A political agenda means they are actively targeting a specific group by only telling part of a story. This is not journalism. This reminds me more of public relations because it is the twisting of words to better something that you support. It is critical that as journalists we understand what the people value and then make our own ethical decision about how to respond to their needs verse their desires.

Election Coverage

This issue ties in very interestingly with election coverage. I am covering my first election on Tuesday, and I think it is really important to consider how you will tell the story before you are submerged in the frenzy of the evening. This article discusses the idea of the political journalist as setting the citizen’s agenda. I had never really thought about this like that before, but it is absolutely true. Journalists are deciding what issues people hear the most about and thus dictate what the election is all about. Even if someone is not seen as politically biased it is nearly impossible to not care about some issues over others and reflect that in an article.

SpinSpotter

This also prompted me to read another article from The New York Times about something called a SpinSpotter. It was created by two men, one liberal and one conservative, and is used to find bias in political journalism. This article is from 2008 and even though this did not catch on, I wonder about the future of products such as this. If people, even just the few people that used this product, think they need to use an app in order to sort through articles and detect bias, how can we think we are doing our job correctly?