Understanding Journalism
Journalism is an activity or profession that involves collecting information about current events, then reporting facts, findings and conclusions to a wider audience through print, digital or broadcast media. The purpose of journalism is to research and report events that impact people’s lives and society in different ways. The journalists are always involved in the selection and presentation of what they consider to be noteworthy, and in meeting the standard of truth and honesty in journalism reporting. The most important characteristic shared by good journalists is curiosity. Good journalists love to read and want to find out as much as they can about the world around them.
Change of journalism
The proliferation of the internet and smartphones has brought significant changes to the media landscape since the turn of the 21st century. This has created a shift in the consumption of printed media channels, as people increasingly consume news through e-readers, smart phones, and other personal electronic devices, as opposed to the more traditional formats of newspapers, magazines, or television news channels.
The rise of social media has drastically changed the nature of journalistic reporting, giving rise to so-called citizen journalists. In a study of journalists in the United States, 40% of participants claimed they rely on social media as a source, with over 20% depending on microblogs to collect facts. The conclusion can be drawn that breaking news nowadays often stems from user-generated content, including videos and pictures posted online in social media. However, though 69.2% of the surveyed journalists agreed that social media allowed them to connect to their audience, only 30% thought it had a positive influence on news credibility. Because of these changes, the credibility ratings of news outlets has reached an all-time low. A study revealed that only 22% of Americans reported a “great deal” or “quite a lot of confidence” in either television news or newspapers.
Consequently, this has resulted in arguments to reconsider journalism as a process distributed among many authors, including the socially mediating public, rather than as individual products and articles written by dedicated journalists.
Professional and ethical standards
While various existing codes have some differences, most share common elements, including the principles of—truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness and public accountability—as these apply to the acquisition of newsworthy information and its subsequent dissemination to the public.
Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel propose several guidelines for journalists in their book The Elements of Journalism. Their view is that journalism’s first loyalty is to the citizenry and that journalists are thus obliged to tell the truth and must serve as an independent monitor of powerful individuals and institutions within society. In this view, the essence of journalism is to provide citizens with reliable information through the discipline of verification.(https://www.daowen.com)
Publishers, owners and other corporate executives, especially advertising sales executives, could try to use their powers over journalists to influence how news is reported and published. For this reason, journalists traditionally relied on top management to create and maintain a “firewall” between the news and other departments in a news organization to prevent undue influence on the news department.
The codes of ethics in journalism vary across various regions of the world. The codes of ethics are created through an interaction of different groups of people such as the public and journalists themselves. Most of the codes of ethics serve as a representation of the economic and political beliefs of the society where the code was written. Despite the fact that there are a variety of codes of ethics, some of the core elements present in all codes are: remaining objective, providing the truth, and being honest.
Future of journalism
There is not a profession in the world that doesn’t take time, now and again, to reflect not only on where they’ve been and who they are, but also where they are going. That is a subject that is always good for a hearty debate. What we do know is that journalism was like an ember; it began as an ash in ancient civilizations, and by the late 1600s, it became a single flame that, with proper tending and oversight, grew into the conflagration it is today.
When information technology was introduced to the world, journalists were excited about how it could be used to shape and propel the profession. However, there can be no question that, instead, it has consumed the practice. Technologies also continue to fall over each other, and segue from rigid formats to multi-modalities. What is true, though, once all of the bells and whistles are stripped away, is that the essence of journalism remains the same. No matter what journalism looks like in the future, the practitioner must be unbiased and their work plagiarism-free. They must not bow to bribes or cut corners to get a story to market before a competitor just to be first. The journalists of today and tomorrow must continue to be driven to work to inform the public without fabrication, and be willing to practice the craft tirelessly, so they maintain and improve their ability to reach their audience. It is obvious that journalism will remain ensconced in the category of “profession”, because of the high expectations it imposes, and the high skill level it requires.
Words & Expressions
credibility：可信性
impartiality：公正，不偏不倚
dissemination：传播
ember：余烬
conflagration：大火
multi-modalities：多模态