Truth Playing Dress Up
The Journalism Industry has concerning flaws that cause the downfalls of many publications. Whether it is a money driven business model, the lack of diversity, or manipulation of news, these elements pose a threat to today’s journalism industry.
It is like a domino effect and one flaw in large can ultimately affect another. For example, the manipulation of news is the process of filtering, rephrasing and reconstructing the news or the truth in a way that would gain more views rather than reporting the truth.
What accounts for this manipulation? The newsroom can affect how the news is packaged and delivered to an audience. If the newsrooms are male-dominated and are predominantly of a particular race, one can assume that the news is most likely to be manufactured.
The article by Daniel T. Rodgers states “We live, to the contrary, in a political-cultural moment saturated with competing claims on truth, each insisting on its veracity.
We have contrived to construct an open marketplace of truths, and it is not a happy state.”
This quote from his article is particularly interesting because it involves business words. He is inferring that because of society’s big business approach, it makes the truth an open marketplace for people to sell. News outlets are the sellers, and each is competing for viewers, readers, and subscribers.
Whoever can get the juiciest story with the catchy headline wins the masses. This is the reason that many people today believe that the truth is a commodity in the journalism industry instead of a necessity. It’s the reason journalism is in the state that it’s in now. There’s truth in some reporting but there are many news outlets doing the same story so what’s so special about yours? There have been occasions where a writer can write a good story, but the editor will ask the writer to “jazz it up” a bit.
An article by James King describes his troubling experience working for the Daily Mail Online. This news outlet is described to be one of the most popular and most visited websites for news in the world.
A critical thinker can assume that this news outlet does more than just report the truth to get the traffic that it does. King describes an occasion where the editor asks him to change an aspect of a story and how despite his best efforts to satisfy the editor, he found his headline changed without his knowledge. The Daily Mail Online did this in terms of treating the truth as a commodity as explained by Rodgers rather than treating the truth as a necessity.
The journalism industry needs to stop treating the truth as a commodity because it isn’t something to sell. There shouldn’t be a ‘marketplace of competing truths’ because that would indicate that there are people that are fighting for acceptance by the general public.
Given the pressures of modern journalism with social media in the mix, a lot of news outlets and publications focus on marketable truths and marketable journalism. What would look appealing to viewers and readers? How can we ensure we’re going to hit our numbers this month?
There needs to be a different approach. The journalism industry needs to prioritize their purpose in society and allow for the truth to be of concern, once that is straightened out other concerning matters like the diversity of a newsroom and news manipulation can be taken care of.
