Who Can You Trust?

Brianna Smith 

 

bs214517@ohio.edu 

 

 

In the last few years, social media has become one of the main channels for news and information. However, it happened too quickly for even journalists to keep up and it caused a shaky ground for the future of news. Several things make it too difficult for viewers to get reliable news from anywhere.

Fight For Views

Firstly, journalists are forced to fight for views on all platforms. In order to get views, writers need to be constantly pumping out the most recent breaking news at all times. This is a lot of pressure for any young writer to handle. Because of this, most news outlets are serving their viewers quantity over quality .

Instead of having the time to fully research a situation and come out with a factual, well-rounded story . . . journalists are forced to write something quickly with minimal detail. This means that most news stories feel very unfinished because they are.

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Biased Algorithms 

Secondly, social media platforms are designed with bias algorithms. As a writer myself, I understand how quickly bias can creep into my own writing after knowing all the details. However, people are forming opinions on things without knowing the full story because their algorithm is only feeding them what they want to hear.

For example, I am a very liberal person and all of the news I get off Twitter is always from a liberal standpoint. Of course it's nice to only read about things I will agree with, but it's dangerous to not be able to view the news as a whole. 

This is why I use Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat as starting points. If a story were to peak my interest, I would then conduct my own research on the topic so I could form an unbiased opinion.

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Fake News

Thirdly, garbage stories with click-bait titles spread so unnervingly fast in 2020. News spreads quickly through social media and consequently, so does fake news. Obviously this is very concerning because anyone can get a website and write some lies with a fantastic title. 

All the writer has to do is upload the post onto twitter and it could potentially spread like wildfire and to make matters worse, people will believe the information as factual!

In an article titled, "Investigating the Influence of 'Clickbait' News Headlines", the author says, "Past research has found that headlines can change perceptions of a criminal suspect's supposed guilt, influence how individuals assess political candidates, and affect comprehension and memory of news articles."

I chose that quote because I think it highlights the importance of writing real factual based stories as a journalist and researching any information given to you as a viewer.

So who can you trust to be a reliable news source? 

The best answer I can give is yourself!

Regardless of the information, always research the topic further by yourself before forming an opinion. 

Picture Imperfect

Robert Guliano

rg116107@ohio.edu

Our recent readings have shed light on an interesting failure in journalistic values.

It is easy to imagine a written piece falling a little short of completely neutral and objective. It is natural that some degree of bias will show up one way or another in a wordy article. This is simply a byproduct of the english language. However, such a failure in the realm of "photo journalism" is not very conceivable and not likely excusable.

Photo's by their nature are journalistic. If a photo is taken and submitted as it comes out, no one on God's green Earth can plausibly question its objectivity. It touches all the fundamental values of journalism and does so naturally.

So, when a photo is doctored and published in a journalistic environment, it is surely subject to scrutiny. The idea that a professional "photo journalist" can make money by taking pictures is certainly generous enough. This only heightens the shame in abusing the privilege.

This holds true for writing and broadcasting as well (every blogger or even tweeter can be a reporter), but it is even easier for anyone to be a photographer (or photojournalist) by definition. Photographs can tell a story faster and with less effort (wording things for an audience or AP style). To put into perspective just how small the gap is between a paid photographer and a regular person, I like to use the following Ohio University example:

Every drunk college girl is a photographer or photojournalist on Thursday through Saturday nights.

Think about this statement another way. An Ohio University student wants to view media content covering Halloween night. Often times the first place that student gets the content is on social media.

Frequently, Sally Snapshot happens to be the same person as Fiona Friend Request. People will either inadvertently or purposely see her pictures on Facebook or Twitter long before they will go to The Post's new and improved website.

This makes the margin for error or ethical slip-up pretty tight in the world of photojournalism. Photojournalists seem like they are rather replaceable, especially at localized media outlets. It would be ignorant not to note that this very concept fuels photojournalists to compromise ethics.

If they can produce superior photographs, then their respective jobs will be safe. The media (perhaps more so than many other industries) is a highly competitive arena. From its management at the top to an individual level, it is full of competition. This may be natural of a capitalist economy, but it is vital to examine the possibility that people like photographers have incentive to push the envelope and set themselves apart from the pack.

The fascinating thing about examining the behavior of these photojournalists is that the same competitiveness that led to their professional prominence ended up sinking them in the end. That is why ethics is so inscrutable. It is not cut and dry like the law is (for the most part). Ethics has a slippery slope, notably in journalism.

Managing that slope is what #jour412 is all about.