By: Alyssa Lanier
al634616@ohio.edu
With all of the new types of media, people are beginning to argue if old newsrooms are more ethical than the new ones.
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| Photo by: iStockphoto and Shannon Henderson |
Both the old and the new forms of journalism want to provide the public with information that keeps everyone up to date. Is one era more truthful and transparent than the other?
The new era of journalism makes it much easier and faster for news to reach the people. The internet is the tool many journalists use to publish articles, blogs, videos and more now. Some people question if faster news means less accurate news, while others may believe that faster news is “better” news. Also, anyone can write an article on social media or the internet. This makes it more difficult for people to draw conclusions about the news. Since anyone can write an article, the writer may not follow ethics and may let their biased opinions show in their writing. This could lead a reader away from supporting a topic or vise versa.
The old era of journalism takes more time to reach the public. This is causing a lot of people to stop reading the newspaper and begin to rely on their mobile devices or laptops to read the news. Print articles can be longer than online articles. Therefore, print articles may supply more information. If someone is scrolling through social media, they are likely to click from one article to the next. This means many online articles get straight to the point if they were created to be published on social media. People may turn to print journalism to read more about a topic.
I do not think one era of journalism is more ethical than the other. A true, objective journalist will stick to his or her values and publish the facts of a story. The public needs to navigate through all the news and decide who is trustworthy. I think that people should learn how to dig deeper and find out if the journalist is accurate, providing evidence, and is not afraid to admit when they have come to the wrong conclusion previously. It is hard for a journalist to develop a reputation in the current time since the public is so wary of the news.
New media has more approaches to a story, whereas print journalism developed a pretty steady way to report the news. Both have their positives and negatives. A positive of the new era of newsrooms is the speed of posting. If there is breaking news, a journalist can report it as soon as he or she gets the facts. This can also be a negative thing about the new media, though. Someone may be very eager to post the breaking news first, and he or she might forget about their ethics in the process. The public has direct access to communicate to the author of an article that was posted online. Print journalists do not have that direct line of communication, which can be a positive thing for them. They would not read the critiques of the article instantly.
Journalism evolves often, and as long as the public can navigate their way through the news articles and the fiction articles, the true message will get out there in the world.
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