Transparency please.

This past week we learned about the journalism of verification, and that nothing that hasn't been verified thoroughly should be printed. One part of this is that journalists should do their best to be transparent. Readers should know as much about the stories they read in the newspapers as the journalist who wrote them; they should not withhold anything from their readers or viewers. In the article, Too Transparent? (http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=4073) by Rachel Smolkin she said, "It's unfair, even hypocritical, for the media to try to play by different rules, to ignore public demands for accountability that we would insist on from anyone else." Smolkin mentioned that the growing desire for newspapers to be more transparent recently is because of the pressure papers get from the blogosphere. They demand to know why some stories were written, why they were run in a certain day and why its on front page instead of another story. There is a lot more demand for knowing the motives behind the journalists and news organizations than there have been. And even if those concerns were present in the past, there wasn't a medium as effective as blogs to communicate them.

But at what point are journalists explaining too much to the readers? Shouldn't readers be more concerned about content than motives anyway? Smolkin addressed this question in the article, but I don't see it as being much of an issue.  Journalists ask for informed readers who ask questions, and usually good journalist are willing to provide answers to them. Its journalists who have something to hide who may be leery of readers who ask too many questions.

Comfort the Afflicted & Afflict the Comfortable

Our guest speaker Don Meyers, gave us this lovely quote while telling us about the Journalism business in class last week. What I found that I liked most about the discussion we had was about the Federal Shield Laws. I didn't know too much about it, so I did some research about them. The Society of Professional Journalists have an article (http://www.spj.org/shieldlaw.asp) with some details about the bill and why we really need to have one, so I officially have a stance. There are situations, where journalists have been incarcerated for not giving up their sources, and I do not agree with it. If the public needs to know of a certain event, and the only way they can is for an anonymous source to tell that story, why should the journalist be punished for that? How can they be loyal to their citizens if they cannot tell the entire story without getting in trouble? What's worse is that Meyers said if the bill gets shot down it will probably be another five years before it has another chance at getting passed. If the next Watergate scandal happened today, would it be overshadowed by the journalist who wouldn't be willing to tell their source? I hope not, because as much as I would like to think that the government is doing everything right, I would want to be told if they weren't. And whoever exposed them would not be a criminal; as a matter of fact, they would probably be my hero.

It was also interesting to hear how sensitive Meyers editors were to his religion when the former prophet died. It was good to know that there are people who take events like that into consideration. It makes me a little more optimistic about entering the workforce. Hopefully I find myself in a similar situation. :-)

Citizens...Not Customers

But according to Trevor Cook of the Australian Broadcast Corporation, the medium makes a difference. In his 2008 article The Death of Quality Journalism (http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/37220.html), Cook expressed that because many news consumers do so on the internet, journalists now have to make sure their stories are "Search Friendly." I mean what would your article be worth if it didn't come up on the first page of a Google search? I know that If what I'm looking for isn't on the first page of my search, I'd rather refine it than scroll through another page; and my guess is that I'm not the only one. For this reason, journalists may have to structure their articles to include key phrases that would most likely be searched. This, Cook argues, is leading to a lower quality in our Journalists.

I must say this is not something that I have noticed myself, but it makes a great deal of sense. Today's journalists are still working for us, the consumers, so they have to present their work in a consumer friendly way. The most consumer friendly way to present anything these days is on the internet. I definitely don't think it is as black and white as this article made it seem, but its definitely something to think about. Not every news corporation is like the New York Times, they all cannot afford to give up advertising space for important stories. I'm sure every news corporation would like to, but it all comes down to dollars and cents.

Journalists have a duty to present us with news. In the past that was via newspaper or television, but today we have to add in the internet. Just as a newspaper article presents their information differently than a news broadcaster would report it, I guess there is room for a different standard in the internet as well. Journalists are doing their job, as hard as we make it for them.

Former newscaster Nick Clooney said, "If it comes down to a question of loyalty, my loyalty will be to the person who turns on the television set..." I guess today it belongs to the person who logs on to the website.

Lets Change It Up A Little Bit...

So it turns out I've been pretty much doing all of these posts wrong (Sigh...), so my posts will look a little bit different from now on. I need an "A" in this && every class to get that 4.0 I want. No days off!