What Would You Choose?

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By: Madison Linville                         What Would You Choose?
ML995316@ohio.edu


What would you do if you were sitting in your bedroom, just watching T.V., when all of a sudden, you hear what sounded like a gunshot. It sounded dangerously close, but you're really not sure if you heard the sound correctly. Maybe it was just the truck coming around to pick up the neighborhood trash, sometimes that makes a loud noise too.

An hour passes, and you keep checking the local news to see if any shooting was reported in your area. In this moment, do you think you would rather have had a news report come out that maybe wasn't entirely truthful, but it came out fast in order to get the news of what had happened across to everyone in your neighborhood? Or, would you have rather the reporters waited to get the full facts, even if the report didn't come out until a good few hours later? There are differing opinions on this question, especially based on the scenario, or the age group of the person who is being asked.

While reading this week's articles, I learned that the generation of people who consume the content in the media is important in determining how they would answer a question such as the one I presented above. In this article, it touches on how the YouTube generation, which would hold the younger generations, understands that stories will evolve. The stories are "dirty and not always right". But, at least it's fast. The older generations, that grew up in the age of print media, are more focused on the truth and transparency of the story. So, depending on what generation you are part of, might change your response to that question. Both speed and transparency are two very important factors of journalism, so there is no wrong way to answer the question.

In regards to reporting a news story, there are a few more important factors to keep in mind. Do not partake in false advertising, here you can read about that time that KFC tried to position itself as a healthy restaurant. We all are smart enough to know that KFC is known for selling those big buckets of greasy fried chicken. So, don't take part in trying to position yourself or your company as something that you're not because it'll come back to haunt you.

Keep in mind that you should know the difference between fact and opinion, especially as a journalist. There was a survey conducted that was measuring the public's ability to distinguish between five factual statements and five opinion statements. Americans could only correctly identify three of the five statements in each category, which is only slightly better than random guessing.
It's especially important for journalist's to know this difference because we are the ones reporting these stories, and we want our stories to be free from bias and opinion!

While the clicks and ratings are going up, allegations of bias and social media pressures are also going up, so it's on us to change how our audience is viewing journalism. We want them to know we are doing our best to create our news in a speedy and truthful way.