Value of Journalism

Max Meyerson

mm603815@ohio.edu

What does journalism truly bring to the table? Do journalists just cover events and stories and report them to the public? Do they control the narrative and slant stories toward their preferred side? What do journalists actually do?

During class we went over this very issue. Many of us said that journalists cover the news. We said that they can provide entertainment. We said they were a beacon for advertising and public relations. We talked about how journalism can be a channel for communication about a variety of different issues. We talked about how journalism connects different parts of the world. Some articles can reach far across the world and can inform people about things they could have never expereinced. Finally we talked about how journalists can be like the watchdogs of society. They are the overseers of everything and the alarm for us when we need them. So is this what journalists do?

The answer is that journalists provide information to the public in order for them to make a decision. The goal of any journalist should be to provide as much accurate information as possible without any bias. The goal of having no bias in your work is nearly impossible but limiting it as much as possible is realistic. Ultimately they can only provide the information that they have and once the readers consume the material it is up to them to react to it. Only the reader can understand the perception that they have about the article and the information put forth.

So why do we have these miss conceptions about journalism? Why do so many people perceive the industry as bias? Perhaps it is the new wave of "fake news" that has given journalists a bad name but I feel this issue has been around longer than the "fake news" phenomenon.

I feel the nature of the job is to deal with this sort of criticism. Your main goal should be to keep your reputation in tact so that the public can trust your information. If they can trust your information and you can provide clear and accurate stories than everyone wins. We need to work for each other, the people need to hold us accountable for keeping our stories straight. We as journalists should not criticize the public for doing so, we should only look to improve as much as we can.

This article does an excellent job of breaking down situations where journalists are asked to bend the truth to protect some people that they are required to cover. They give a real life example of a journalists asking this very question and they give an example of a situation like this. I like the example because it plainly states that it is the journalists job to tell the truth. My last post was about truth and how important it is in journalism and this journalist agrees with me.

Overall my biggest takeaway from class and this assignment is that it is hard to be objective. Being a journalist is hard because you are required to be totally unbiased when nobody can be totally unbiased. You are asked to gather more information on a subject than anybody and detach yourself from the situation, that is hard. In its very essence it is hard to get close to something and not become subjective about it. That is what we have to deal with as journalists and that is why there is "fake news."