Final Thoughts
Over the course of this class, I have realised that I never really questioned the news media before. I consumed it, and I did so fairly uncritically.
Obviously, on some level everybody knows that there is a selective process determining newsworthiness. But on the whole, you trust that what ends up being written in the newspapers, or aired on television, is as objective a representation of truth as possible. While this kind of diligent, investigative reporting does exist, this course has opened my eyes to many types of journalistic work that do not live up to this standard. The concept of “churnalism”, for example, was wholly new to me, and I find it every bit as fascinating as disconcerting. I had also never heard of Noam Chomsky’s and Edward S. Herman’s radical concept of the propaganda model that questions the validity of reporting due to the media having to create revenue, thus giving it a strong incentive to perpetuate the status quo. I am a little bit shocked, actually, by how little I knew about the current state of journalism — and yet consumed news every day. How little one learns about work conditions of journalists, the guidelines they use to determine newsworthiness, journalistic standards and the conditions that possibly lead to their erosion. After all, journalism is as public a line of work as it gets!
One point that is being driven home over and over again, by the media, by educational institutions and generally by the public, is that we live in an age of media. That in order to understand how media works, you need to learn about it. But only in this course did the outlook on media feel genuinely critical and independent from mainstream opinion. As much as some illusions have been shattered, I now value the importance of investigative journalism and the work that goes into it much more than I did before. It’s not enough that journalism, and newspapers, and news programmes exist and that people read or watch them. What really makes the difference is the quality of reporting, and knowing how to distinguish between informative and… well, “consumerist” journalism. In this course, we were given the tools to do exactly that. Even more importantly, we were encouraged to leave our comfort zone, to develop and express our thoughts and to be very independent in how we work.
It is rare that a course is applicable to so many aspects of everyday life, and even rarer that it leads you to question things formerly taken for granted, or renegotiate your perspective on how reality and social consensus is constructed. I can wholeheartedly congratulate my past self for ticking the right box when choosing which course to take for the winter semester, because “Inside the News Media” was worth every minute.
