Journalism and Ethics: trying to stay trustworthy

Brianna Reid
br536013@ohio.edu

It is fair to say that journalism today is probably one of the most popular career paths. Everyone wants to be a reporter or writer and cover hard hitting news stories to expose scandals and give people the facts. If only this popularity translated into favorable feelings. Journalists, who are essentially considered the media, are some of the most distrusted people we have. Why?

 https://www.thclabs.org/news/the-incredible-media-whos-the-inventor/

While there are numerous reasons for the skepticism facing journalism, a big one that I hear from people is that media has taken on the perception that they all have hidden agendas. They all are run by larger corporations and therefore take on the views of that corporation. Consequently, the public may assume that the stories reported have a slant and will not trust them to be unbiased or factual in their delivery of the news.( Why People Distrust Media ) What then can journalists focus on to try and combat this kind of reputation?

In The New Ethics of Journalism, two major suggestions can be made to combat the lack of trust. First, being transparent in every sense of the word. Be truthful. Be factual. Be as clear as possible when reporting the facts and report them without bias or motive. The goal is to inform and allow the public to draw their on conclusions. Second, focus on community. Journalists are writers for the people. The public is the community, and though it is hard to define a definite community size or range, your strategy to be an agent of truth for them should remain the same. Journalists have an obligation to be thorough and to provide as much information to their audience as they can. In spite of the challenges they face, the goal is to inform. Always!

 Trust becomes an even greater concern when we factor in the rise and dominance of online media sources. Social media, blogs, podcasts, and random gossip websites have become more popular than imagined. They may not always be looked to for hard hitting, detail oriented pieces that explain the events of the day; however, they are more than effective when it comes to putting out headlines and ideas. All it takes is one whisper of an incident for it to be taken out of proportion.

In addition to the already existing notions about journalists, they have to combat the concept of "fake news".  There are a lot of made up headlines and stories that are surfacing today; there is no truth to them but they are put out there to create buzz and get attention. Instances like this make it difficult for real journalists to be believed when they publish stories. It is not because people question whether it happened or not but rather because people question if it happened the way it is being described.

There are ways to combat fake news and to decide on its validity (Fighting Against Fake News) but will even this be enough to help journalists get their credibility back? I doubt it. I think journalism has dug itself into a hole; there are too many different angles and different versions being told for the same story. One news station reports it this way while another reports in another way. It becomes two totally different stories then. Who do people believe? What story do they take as factual and unbiased? Until they can answer this journalism will continue to be under fire.