What Media Can Truly Be Trusted?

Brooke Balzano
bb240415@ohio.edu

In today's day and age, it's hard to truly know what you can believe in. We live in a world where a social networking site has now become a main source of news for some, while others think it may not be reliable. The Internet has such a large impact on the way we receive our news, with media outlets no longer focusing solely on television or radio broadcasts, but now making sure they update their website, social media and other outlets accordingly.

How Americans Get Their News

According to PEW Research Center, about four in ten Americans get their news from online. The demand for print newspapers has decreased because people are no longer looking to get their news from a printed source. The benefit to news online is that it can be consistently updated and changed if need be. The Internet allows for rapid updating and makes sources very accessible for consumers to find. Although watching the news is considered the most preferred by some, reading the news online is much more preferred than any other option to read.

Courtesy of PEW Research Center

Four Reasons Why Journalism Is Not Trusted

1. Money:

When it comes to broadcasting news across all types of platforms, money is always involved. Distributing this information to viewers is not inexpensive and can be a lengthy project before everything is finished and running the way it should. The issue is that more times than not with online/broadcast news, the main goal is to be the first one to break the story. If a station catches wind of an urgent story, they want to get it out and published as soon as possible. With that in mind, it is more likely that there will be errors in the post and the story could be painted in a completely different light than what was intended. Not only does trying to be the first one to publish a story runs the risk of tainting your brand if any false information was released, but it also minimizes how much money you are spending because you care more about what is said than how everything was around it.

2. Spinmeisters:

A spinmeister plays a very crucial part in journalism especially on the political side of things with Twitter specifically. President Trump has his own personal Twitter account that he tweets whatever he wishes off of and has the tendency to try to influence his followers greatly with what is said. Most recently, rapper Kanye West began tweeting at President Trump and speaking rather highly of him. Although it is like this was not a true spinmeister scenario, this is something that greatly impacted the general public's opinion because they were such big fans of Kanye. Since Kanye is a very famous and reputable rapper, he now made a statement saying he supports the president, which will now impact all of the fans that interact with him daily.

3. Tabloid Journalism:

Tabloid journalism is very common when trying to bring someone good publicity. Media outlets are likely to cover "astroturf," which is when a fake event is put on, for the public to give them attention and make themselves look better even if it was all pre-planned. Tabloid journalism is also a prime spot for fake news stories to develop. More often than not, an outlet is trying to give a specific area attention to answer some questions and create a storyline off of it, so it is very easy to make up lies about something that you know was not true. 

4. Political Bias:

Political bias is when a group is being prejudiced against a specific outlet or network because it is something they do not believe in. When it comes to major television networks, FOX tends to learn more conservatively while networks like MSNBC and CNN are more liberal networks. By having political bias, it makes it difficult for people who do not have the same beliefs as you because they are automatically going to think that one is bad and one is good, which is necessarily the case. When a source is biased, it takes away the credibility the source once had because it shows that you are learning one way and showing you what you could have. It makes it difficult to trust this source if it has a reputation like this because it will not be something that you could have a neutral conversation with.