Social Media revolution

It blows my mind to think about how the news and the media have changed in the last few years and with the boom of the internet how much information we can get. Although we have to really be careful of what kind of information is valid and is credible there’s just tons and tons of information out there. Facebook and twitter have also revolutionized they way we communicate and the information that we share.

I was surprised to see that during the bombing of the Mumbai Marriot hotel in India the first images that started going around the world were images and news feeds from people inside the hotel using twitter. Just minutes after the attacks the messages on twitter were running out of control at a rate of 70 news feeds every five seconds. But although this mediums can do a lot of god just getting the breaking news information to the people faster than anything else, this mediums (twitter, Facebook, etc) required the writers to transmit and report on news seconds after things happened and many think this can have a big impact on the credibility of the news they produce. Although I can agree with that I think that if you want real reporting you can rely to news channels but social media will definitely keep us updated of what’s the latest news and we cannot take that for granted. At the end is just what we do and how we take the information that is given to us what matters.

A day in the life of a journalist!

Well I wouldn’t be the best person to describe a typical day in the life of a journalist so anything that you read in this post may be far away from reality. Given that I am not a journalist I will just write from the perspective of an outsider… an spectator. I would say that there is no such thing like a typical day in the life of a journalist; as a journalist everyday is full of new challenges and stories to go and hunt, is like a new day for discoveries to reveal untold stories, is a day full of questions wanting to be answered and mysteries to be revealed. Although the above description my sound way away from reality and anyone would think I’m just going insane, I decided to write this blog following what I feel with no restrictions on the typical thinking ..Is this what the instructor wants me to write??? No, I feel I just wanted to write what I feel about the field of journalism.

Even though my field of study is business, (yeah I know boring ) I feel that journalist have to have passion for what they do. There is nothing better than a story well written whether is to uncover a case of corruption in the halls of Washington or a story about a boy who lived in the country with his poor family. The words can transmit that energy and passion and fury and many other feelings. I think of journalism as a public service in a different way, not just what the words “Public Service” Imply literally but also as a service to help people escape from the overwhelming day to day life that sometimes trapped us in. maybe that’s the reason why now days we have so many entrepreneurial journalists because they have that passion and commitment even tough making a living to support a family could be tough for them.

Privacy safety and independence

The news are a powerful tool that affect the lives of millions of people almost everyone is affected by them somehow. We all have a right to be informed of what is going on in our world but what happens when the journalist cross the borders of privacy to report on sensationalist issues that harm some people and have little of public service? That’s an issue we see in news everyday how sometimes we are putting a lot of emphasis on issues that don’t really have an impact on society they are just “gossip”.
The truth is that these issues really sell numbers and increase ratings that are one of the reasons they are always in the news rooms. The exercises that we did in our class of Thuesday were really interesting because they gave me the opportunity to thing about how a decision to report can have an impact in so many lives. It gave a me a perspective of how to approach things in certain situations.
But moving away from the safety and privacy issues we go to the independence issues. As we discussed in class sometimes the government tries to impede a story to be run this was the case of the pentagon papers, but when it comes to the safety of others or to ensure the success of a military operation they do have the right to stop this information from going to the public at the end the public will receive the benefit from not knowing certain things until it is prudent. The problem I see is when the independence of reporters is affected by advertising. In the article The Online Threat to Independent Journalism, this issue is approached. I quote “Yet there is new evidence that the very qualities that make online publishing so intriguing to journalists are spawning subtle new approaches to advertising that may threaten the fragile journalistic tradition of independence from advertiser influence” I will leave the judgment to anyone who reads this blog because at the end each of us should create our own opinion.

The future of press...

A few decades or even years ago it would have sound really naïve to think that the circulation of newspapers would disappear in the future, that no one would look for print papers any longer to read them and immerse themselves into those stories. The way that we see and receive news has drastically changed since the boom of the internet. Now you can have access to tons of information to a point where there’s an overload of it. Now you have many different sources and newspapers are doing anything that they can stay alive. People access the news on their personal computers or their phones but one medium that is really changing the shape of all of these is the social media networks.

Now you don’t have to go looking for the news if they are relevant to you can either receive a feed of certain news deliver to you from different sources; on the other hand you can get everyone to share them with you trough the social media. The article The Future of News the “Me” in the “Media” gives an interesting point of view of how the social media is shaping the news. Now we get everyone to be more involved and active participant on the things that are affecting our lives. We can only notice how we are involved in protesting in a new way…just take a look at the amount of groups that are formed daily on Face-Book.

Now the trend is to go and follow bloggers because with all the technological changes we get the news in a faster way leaving time to get involved in what we really want, the opinion section. Bloggers play a big role in this transformation of news because they encourage the discussion on the different topics. By planting their opinions and their point of view on a certain topic they can give shape to more complex issues or simply can plant an idea in or head. We can have all the arguing sides of a story in different blogs but at the end the key is to still think and analyze the issues ourselves and not let other think for us.

Journalism Independence

The job of the journalist is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable or at least that what is said in America. This is a very common phrase about how journalism should be. Basically the reporter should act as a watchdog but there’s a time where we have to question ourselves when do I stop being just a spectator where is the line that separates me from being an observer and becoming a participant. The line sometimes can become really blurry. I think that reporters are always involved in various social events and when the relationships that you build in your personal life and the values and ideas that you share can start crossing that line before we can notice it. In many cases our own values can be threatened and we will want to stop being just that observer and let our own emotions an opinions fill the stories that we cover.

I guess that this is something that we have to have present at all times to make sure we avoid it. To remain independent at all times in the reporting we do we must be careful of things that may seem harmless. When we build relationships we are exposed to receive personal gifts or favors, the question we will have to ask ourselves each time is if it is ethical to accept them and what interference they can have in our career.

But juts moving on the concept of being an observer if found an article that was very interesting about the Journalism independence. In the article Dog Clifton, the editor of the Herald said: “The newspaper that practices public journalism should be able to provide help, related to problems of public education, health care delivery, and criminal justice, not by dictating a solution, but by facilitating broad, purposeful discourse on the issue, by celebrating victories, by diagnostically noting failures, by encouraging citizens involvement, by outlining and assessing available courses of action." in other word my view of being an observer just completely change, by providing the public the information they need we are giving them what they need to be involved, the information.

Biased Journlism

The issue of bias in journalism really made me think a lot especially after our class, not being able to eliminate it doesn’t sound right; but just looking at some interviews during this past two days I just came to the realization that sometimes that biased is needed. Some of the reporters I was watching were very passive with their questions and in many cases didn’t even get clear answers to what they were asking. While I was sitting there watching I felt that they weren’t doing the job they had to do. I really feel strong bout the issue and felt that maybe having a stronger opinion can lead the journalist to make those uncomfortable questions that everyone avoids, it can lead them to be more assertive in the type of questions that they asked. This way more of the "truth" could actually come to the surface, be unveiled, and the public can form a better opinion on the issue.

Knowing that the bias cannot be completely eliminated due to the background and experiences that each of us have don’t take my sleep away anymore. I just feel that it is our duty as citizens to dig deeper when we want to form an opinion about an issue and not just let the media feed us what they think or what they want. It is not a secret for anyone that the media is manipulated to focus the attention of the public on certain areas and forget about others, although the media will never accept this we cannot be blind. For this same reason we need to look for all of the sides of a story and then we can really have a clear picture.

I was reading an article from Reuters about their journalism. In the article “Handbook of Journalism” They claim that they are completely unbiased with their reporting.

“Reuters would not be Reuters without freedom from bias. We are a “stateless” news service that welcomes diversity into our newsrooms but asks all staff to park their nationality and politics at the door. This neutrality is a hallmark of our news brand and allows us to work on all sides of an issue, conflict or dispute without any agenda other than accurate, fair reporting”

I find this interesting because after our last class discussion, I can only see that it will be impossible for any journalist to leave everything they are behind the door of the newsroom because they will have to stop going in the newsroom completely. The experiences and background are the roots of whom we are now and that will always play a part in any issue that we report on. But as I said before I dint see these as a problem unless they biased is completely obvious and it tempers with the truth that has to be presented. I had found myself changing sides on some issues after I studied all the sides and have a clear picture, after a put myself on the shoes of the protagonists on both sides of a story.

A Higher Calling..

I guess there are many reporters out there who are trying to show us what’s going on in our world, but there are few who I think do a good job about it. Don’t get me wrong I don’t have anything against the profession or for any of those who practice it, but I feel that sometimes many of the news or blogs we read are loaded with biased and uncompleted information. If we are so passionate about a certain subject and we go above and beyond to find the details, to unveil the truth, why is that that in many cases journalists just quit in the middle of the road and try to avoid the opinions and facts that oppose their point of view?

As we discussed in our class Journalist have to follow a code of ethics that is much higher and sometimes complicated than it may seem. They have to surrender to that higher calling to serve other and deliver complete and accurate information, but many failed to do this and tried to bend or hide parts of the truth. I think journalist have a lot of power in their hands because they are the gatekeepers of what is talked about or what is not; they decides what issues are important and which ones are not. Please don’t take this 100% literally but think about it, the everyday conversations that are carried around are motivated and moved by what the media is talking about and this is why journalists must use that power with integrity. I found an interesting quote by John Oldham an English poet that said “I wear my pen as others do their sword”. Words are powerful and with the help of the media that power is multiplied by millions.

Just to expand in my point of view I would like to share an article that I found about how journalists have failed in the financial crisis saying that journalists should have also been bailed out by the government the same way that all the people who was culpable for the financial crisis because they carry out a big part of that culpability. Some exert form the article Traditional Journalisms Failure in Financial crisis says:

“Journalists were grossly deficient when it came to covering the reckless behavior, sleaze and willful ignorance of fundamental economics, much of which was reasonably obvious to anyone who was paying attention, that inflated the housing and credit bubbles of the past decade. Their frequent cheerleading for bad practices — and near-total failure to warn us, repeatedly and relentlessly, of what was building — made a bad situation worse."

I am not going to put myself in any of the two sides of the story because even though I don’t completely agree with the article it really made me think about it. For this reason I leave it up to the reader to form their own opinion on this article and this particular issue.

Picture from Zazzle.com