Christopher Riley
cr451912@ohio.edu
3000riley.c@gmail.com
Modern journalism has become a race and a competition. Journalists and the Media are engaged in a never-ending fight to break the stories first. Not only do they want to be the first to report, they want their version of the truth to be the publicly accepted version. It seems that this competition gets more intense every year. This circus we know as modern journalism has grown to be so competitive that any and all ethics have seemed to go out the window.
Journalists are trained and taught to seek the truth. They are tasked with upholding specific standards such as being accurate, complete and treating subjects with respect and dignity. It is hard to watch any news program or read any news article and feel that the journalist is respecting the subject or even that they are reporting an unbiased truth. They want their truth to be our truth and it has become obvious.
Most people remember AOC’s photo op from 2019 supposedly in front of a migrant facility in Texas. One of the codes of ethics journalists of the National Press Photographers Association is not to be manipulated by staged photo opportunities. There has been heavy debate between liberals and conservatives on whether or not this photo was staged in a parking lot or is legitimately AOC crying in front of a detainment facility. Here is an interesting piece from Fox News’ take on the debate:
Now on the other side of the political spectrum, Donald Trump was accused of staging a photo op in front of a church while holding a bible during the 2020 riots. He was accused of violently clearing protesters in order to get this photo. While conservatives have made efforts to debunk this claim, liberal media isn’t having it. Here is MSNBC’s take:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/09/protestors-cleared-outside-white-house-for-fence-not-trump-photo-op.html
These two pictures and news articles are proof that there is a race to deliver the masses one version of the truth. The media has two sides; conservative and liberal. It doesn’t matter how much stories are debunked. What matters to modern journalists is that they get the public to share their political beliefs. The code of ethics has been gone for a long time. When liberal and conservative media’s only agenda is to bury their political opponents instead of reporting an unbiased story there are no ethics. This is why most Americans don’t trust the news and until the media brings ethics back into its reporting this will never change.
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