Skip to main content

How Modern Journalism is Failing its Reader


Since I started this blog around six months ago, I have continuously touched on points about the impact of the media on us and everyday life as a whole. And even now, I strongly believe the subtle influences that journalism has on our society represent a failing in their field of work.

Previously, I related these inaccuracies to the political spectrum and foreign affairs that have a profound worldwide effect on millions. This time, I wish to make it more general, and through touching on the nuances that shape the career that is a long-term goal of mine, it is easier to explain how journalism is in a dark place in the modern age.

The demands of reporters, editors, broadcasters and the many other forms of journalistic employment are tough, take nothing for granted. The single greatest need in the industry is speed. For most, this is more important than accuracy. But here lies a major issue with news, or should I perhaps say, ‘fake news’?

Say you’re the reporter that breaks the news of a historic worldwide peace deal using a unique source that helps you publish it before all the other major news outlets have had time to write the headline. You go down in history, whether people like it or not. If you’re inaccurate, so what? If all goes wrong, you can just pin it on your source and say it was unreliable. At worst, you’ll come out with egg on your face, which is usually repairable given that news is constantly evolving with each day.

It is this need for speed that in a way backs up President Trump’s claim of ‘fake news’. For everyone wants a slice of that potential glory, naturally, seeing as newspapers and magazines are money-making businesses, such is the capitalist society that we live in. No outlet cares if the reader is reading accurate information from their article particularly, as long as they are selling the papers and getting the online views, everything is thus rosy for the moguls controlling the media outlets and for the journalists that receive a degree of self-gratification that people have an interest in what they have to say.

See the source imageFrom this has developed the idea of ‘click-bait’. By this, I don’t mean anything that has a link to an article displayed (else I would be guilty of this myself through various social media platforms), but rather the intentional displaying of a misleading headline, often dramatized by the media outlet in order to receive more views. And this is what leads to an enormous amount of problems regarding inaccurate news in this day and age, given the influence and worldwide nature of social media, which is only rapidly increasing further.

This can range from subtle changes in politics in order to slyly influence a reader’s judgement, to a complete inaccuracy about the death of a celebrity or something of a similar ilk. Either way, it is a failing of what we call journalism.

It shouldn’t be the priority of the writer who is putting out an article to get views or sell papers. Unfortunately, simple economics gets in the way of that happening, but it still infuriates me that writers or editors are happy for people to be fed lies as long as they are getting their cash for bending the truth.

What was the primary aim of journalism? I’d argue it was to help inform those who may not have the access to opinions of others on social and political issues especially. It seems now that newspapers are business, treated as any other entities that exist just to make money. In that regard, it is clear that journalism as a whole has failed miserably. That tricking people gives greater reward than showing a representation of the truth is an indefensible mistake we have grown to accept.

People often say censorship is bad but, to a point, I don’t think the current system of media is much different. You could make a case to say that at least there is no competition when we have full censorship of the press, though neither of the two are ideal.

The problems stem further than just the writers that write the articles, the editors that control their freedom, and the moguls who steer the direction of the media outlet. It emanates from the basic system; the greed and ignorance of all those that have an involvement in it.

The whole journalistic industry has gone past the point of repair and it will shape our future dramatically in the next 100 years. And barring a dramatic change, this will be a process that is severely detrimental to us. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

As Western governments wilfully ignore events in Palestine, they have lost the trust of their own people - and crucially, the Global South

It does not take a genius to spot the obvious contradictions in geopolitical narratives of Western governments and media evident over the past few decades. The US' post-9/11 botched "war on terror", that created a generation of instability in the Middle East, has served as the driver for European countries to lament the subsequent influx of migrants and legitimise the xenophobic desires of far-right parties. More recently, the same states have rightfully isolated Russia for their invasion of Ukraine - despite the similarity to their atrocities after 2001. Yet in the past three months, they have managed to brazenly exhibit their hypocrisy to an extent that I, and evidently many others, find astounding. And any long-time readers will know I've been more than happy to highlight duplicity of Western countries on this blog, so that should tell you something about how bizarre recent events feel. Source: UNRWA, via The Wire In response to the militant group Hamas' terror
Post a Comment
Read more

We must better consider all the people caught up in modern-day warfare

In some ways, this blog comes full circle to the very second post I wrote on  here circa six years ago .  That time, in the aftermath of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, the blog focused on how names and stories appeal to our emotion more than facts and figures. Boy can I see the difference in writing style - 17 year old Kabir bizarrely quoted Stalin in making the point.  What I grappled with, and have done for a while since, is the unnatural and paradoxically natural emotional response to scales of tragedy. Hundreds of thousands dying is harder to comprehend than ten that are accompanied by names and faces. Yet more people dying is obviously worse globally. Ironically, I forgot the shooting’s details, which in itself encapsulates the point.  These limits of human empathy are (at least to me) fascinating, but they pose some problems in the globalised, interconnected world we now live in. In a world where our media consumption plays such a key role in how we perceive and interpret l
Post a Comment
Read more

Light at the End of the Tunnel

It is never a bad thing to ask for help, contrary to what the mind, or even society, might say. Unfortunately for me, whilst sat there in floods of tears at my kitchen table, the whole tissue box I had emptied littered on the floor, I didn’t realise it. It was a Wednesday evening in late January, I had just gone through a day of school feeling perfectly content – bar the worries many teenagers find themselves under. I recall feeling focused in the three lessons I had that day, and playing football in the afternoon, I imagined, would only help my mood. After all, they do say exercise helps balance the chemicals in your brain. But I got home, sat down and genuinely considered suicide. What possibly is there left here for me? How is it ever going to feel like life is worth living? The weeks of building anxiety and depression had taken their toll. School stress, A-levels closing in. Social stress (ever-increasing in an age where social media has become habitual). Coupled with en
Post a Comment
Read more