The topic for debate this week revolves around modern journalism.
Are we pushing and inadvertently shaping public opinion as opposed to factual reporting?
In the past, the press and media professionals have been esteemed as gatekeepers of the public; these public conversations however, are bordering along the facets of story-telling in this era of new age technology.
As brought up in the text, “The membrane separating journalism and the novel and short story, fact and fiction, has been pierced, and these forms and many others flow into one another” (Carey, J., 1997, p. 329).
In contemporary journalism, photos and digitatized footages allow viewers to indulge in the raw emotions and aesthetic value of real-time events.
“…slow motion turns death into spectacle by magnifying every movement and ampli- fying every second of the act of dying: the slight jerk of the body, the cigarette falling out, the gentle sliding down the pole” (Chouliaraki, L., 2009, p. 524).
The tragedic footages of the recent tsunami in Japan have evoked the natural sentiment of emphathy among viewers. We were invited to feel and be virtually present at the scene, without overexposing ourselves to the horror of the situation.
As such, the line between professional communicators, the likes of reporters, artists and public relations practitioners, and sensational forms of writing has been erased.
New Media, a term which probably charted 2010’s “Word of the Year”, has brought forth so much change in the field of journalism that reporters and public relations professionals are adjusting their best finds and breaking news into 140 characters and less.
We, as foster children of generations X, Y and Zs, have re-create an era where journalists’ news values are inclined towards conversations with ordinary people, rather than butt-numbing news agendas from press conferences.
While it may seem heartening that ordinary people, like us, are given the chance to shine on online platforms (in persuasive Times New Roman, no less), it undeniably also present questionable issues regarding trust.
Phillip Pullman said it best, “There’s a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we’re even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won’t supply them.”
This hunger for stories is readily supplied by the emergence of public and citizen journalism. But has it also fractured the building blocks of traditional journalism?
In essence, Chapter 11 effectively construed the art of journalism. Readers are often regularly serve with a helping of contradictory articles by journalists, who conveniently arrive at different conclusions based on rivaling, albeit relevant sources.
The key word is relevance.
Who are we to judge an absolute value and worth of “truth”?
We are often influenced by particular ideas and assumptions pitched by our surroundings. So much so that these stories reflect our values and idelogies.
Hence, Anderson’s concept of the nation as “an imagined community” rings truer than ever.
“It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (Anderson, B., 1984, p.15).
References
Anderson, B. (1984) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, pp. 5-7, retrieved 22 May 2011 via http://www.nationalismproject.org/what/anderson.htm.
Carey, J. (1997) The communications revolution and the porfessional communicator. In E. S. Muunson & C. A. Warren (Eds.), pp. 128-143, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Chouliaraki, L. (2009) Journalism and the visual politics of war and conflict. In: Allan, Stuart, (ed.) Routledge companion to news and journalism, pp. 520-533, Routledge, UK.
The Girl with the Blackberry. 