The New Adolescence of Journalism in the Age of Information
By Alan Nero
The advent of the internet and global information sharing sparked rapid growth of new interactive media.
Websites, blogs, and social media applications now disseminate news on a minute-to-minute basis.
Simultaneously, this granted news institutions new platforms with which to address their audiences. The benefit and challenge of reaching a global audience required news companies to keep pace with the immediate turnaround of their internet media counterparts.
The availability of alternative news sources rivaled established institutions and changed the landscape of readership over the past two decades. As readers moved from print and broadcast news in favor of online publications, long-standing news organizations were forced to adapt, downsize, and refocus their attention to the digital world. Those who struggled most were acquired by larger news conglomerates or became beholden to their advertisers.
As a result, a pervasive sense of corporate bias spread through larger media companies such as Fox News. As James W. Carey wrote in A Short History of Journalism for Journalists: A Proposal and Essay:
“…a generation back was a golden age before Rupert Murdoch invaded North America, cost accountants took over the newsroom, and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity began peddling ideology while calling it journalism and reportage.”
Journalists from all sources have struggled to adapt to new practices such as writing, fact-checking, and proofreading under 10-minute time limits to keep up with breaking news and “live tweeting” events without the luxury of editing sessions. These high-pressure, time-sensitive demands have forced journalists to sacrifice aspects of their ethical obligations: accuracy, impartiality, and transparency. The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Vox, are just a few publications guilty of these errors.
In addition, respected institutions have been slandered by political officials to sway the public against journalists despite accurate and factual reporting. The combined outcome of these issues produced a public opinion that most journalists are inherently corrupt, biased, or incapable of accurate reports. The term “Fake News” has become commonplace in modern discourse.
In this bleak and hostile landscape, the question arises whether news media will recover or ultimately fail as a byproduct of political prejudice, poor business practices, and ethical neglect. A brief look at journalism’s history provides the answer to this question.
Journalists have always had adjustment periods following technological advancement. Institutions struggled to cooperate with the introduction of broadcast journalism in the 1930’s, and commercial news stations still wrestle with the ethics of sensationalist headlines for higher ratings.
For the first time, however, the public can give instant feedback to reporters and access a vast database to fact check journalists on their work. If reporters display the courage to acknowledge their mistakes with humility, and the public acknowledges journalists are capable of human error, society can emerge from the new adolescence of journalism with a previously unseen level of cooperation with its journalists.
New, ethically based organizations such as Propublica can develop and thrive, and serve the public in a way never witnessed before.
