JOURNALISM AS A PUBLIC FORUM

There is a struggle between the proliferation of technology and the integrity of journalism.

According to Elements of Journalism, "The proliferation of debate created by the machines will minimize human fallibility and raise us all. We can rely on the marketplace of facts and ideas, not on journalists, to sort out the truth."

I think this is an interesting topic to think about...though I certainly hope that people never cease to rely on honest journalism (or I will never have a job!). There are many factors that go into the idea of increasing the public forum.

Blogging is one venue of the public forum. As a blogger, writers can write whatever and whenever they please. They can write factual entries, or merely opinion pieces. In our class discussion, we talked about how blogs may eliminate the distortion of facts because the blogger can post links to wherever they got their information. This abdicates the responsibility for the writer to verify the facts.

Wikipedia is another venue of public forum. The philosophy behind Wikipedia is that the facual errors will be caught and changed by the multiple authors of an article.

As the amount of technology increases, the ability for people to talk about events increases as well. This can be a positive thing for journalism by allowing people to share their opinions and further their wealth of knowledge ... but it can also be a detriment to journalism. For instance, the stories that have the most comments on the comment boards may not necessarily be the most newsworthy stories. Also, if a journalist relies solely on the public debate to decide which stories to cover, they may be influenced to cover mostly the arguments, and not necessarily the events.

Four of the driving forces for the argument culture that has evolved in our nation are as follows:
1-Talk is cheap
With blogs, chatrooms, discussion boards, etc. - it is easy for people to communicate and share ideas with eachother.
2-Devalue expertise
There is an emphasis on energetic, young faces - there is an extreme desire for debate
3-Does not expand scope of public discussion
This revers to the general coverage of simple stories, narrow focuses, entertainment stories
See this LINK to a video about the world's fattest woman. This is an example of the focus on entertainment stories.
4-The nature of discussion
This refers to the belief that compromise is not a legitimate option for many people. See this VIDEO of Jon Stewart on Crossfire - reprimanding them for their lack of journalistic integrity.

A good journalist should keep in mind that the goal of journalism is to inform rather than to entertain. I love the ending quote on the handout from class which says, "As rich and empty as the new forums may be, depending on the posting, they cannot supplant the search for fact and context that the traditional journalism of verification supplies."