Journalism is under threat from internet bloggers, with un-accountable news, views and analysis. Newspapers have seen declining sales since the advent of online media as readers switch to the internet.
According to a poll carried out in 2006 by the Institute for the Protection of Journalism, news journalists are trusted less than mechanics and slightly higher than used car salesmen. This poll shows the distrust of journalists in society. A profession that is supposed to be the eyes and ears of the people.
However regardless of how suspicious the public is of journalists, it is still journalists the public turns to for news. The most accessed website for news, is the BBC. This demonstrates that regardless of the opinion of the institutional news media, people still return to an identifiable and trusted brand.
This is what the business of media has become, another commodity to be bought and sold. A survey carried out by a consumer think tank, CHECK, suggested that many journalists see readers as consumers. Journalists felt like they have to sell a story to the reader.
This has resulted in competition between journalists especially on the internet where millions of blogs compete for readers. But competition brings its own problems such as inaccuracy and sensationalism. Journalists constantly sensationalise stories in an attempt to outdo each other.
In Britain about 50% percent of journalists are university graduates. This shows that institutional journalism recognises the need for qualifications and an adequate education to become apart of the profession. There is no way of finding out a figure for the credentials of those that post on blogs or websites.
The internet is littered with badly written articles ranging on a broad number of issues. Yet from the war in Iraq to domestic politics, people are turning to the internet for alternative answers. The traditional media has responded by expanding their field of play by providing an online product, however this does not appear to have improved the standard of work produced by the new breed of news posters.
This new breed is being identified as a major threat and the beginning of the end for traditional journalism. According to one internet provider the number of homes in the UK that have the internet has increased ten fold in the last year. As this internet revolution takes place readers no longer see the need for having a newspaper posted through the letter box or to walk to the local newsagents.
A prime example of how new media is killing traditional journalism, and the dangerous implications for society, is the story of the Indonesian island of Kangean.
The Internet had recently reached the main town of Pabean and with it came the age of new media. The local newspaper experienced a decrease in readership resulting in local journalists leaving the island; those that remained had to compete with the Internet for readers.
This was something new for journalists to deal with, traditionally they had concentrated on local issues, bringing news from other islands in the locality, but now they had to do it faster and more frequently if they were to compete.
In 2006 a story broke over the Internet about one of the main tribes and its leaders on the island. The Indonesian government had paid money to tribal leaders so that to allow a foreign corporation on to the island to excavate a number of sites the indoasianews website alleged.
The local journalists came across the story. In their haste to get the story out to the islanders, and without much investigation the local paper printed the story. After locals read the story, incensed at the claim that certain tribal leaders had been taking kickbacks from the government, protests followed. Some of the protests ended in violence and local council headquarters were burnt down.
The allegations turned out to be a fake, started by a blogger just to fill some space on his blog. The blogger had thought that no one from this remote island would read the story.
Now it is time to come clean. The statistics I have supplied above are all false, even the story itself is a lie. So are the ten-fold claim, the think tanks and percentage of university graduates. How many people would have taken for fact and quoted the statistics and story above? It is an attempt to make my point that new media is not killing journalism. Journalists are killing journalism, as a result of corporate influence, shorter deadlines but increased output has lead to flawed journalism. Nick Davies, award winning journalist and author of Flat Earth News, a book taking a look at the journalism industries sources and practices, calls the drive for stories in a shorter time frame “Churnalism”.
Journalists are now more than ever relying on press releases for their news, not given the time to get out in the field and investigate, interview people and find the news for themselves.
Both new media and institutional journalism can produce incorrect material. The Drudge Report, the online news website that broke he Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, carried a story, during the Kerry presidential campaign in 2004. The Drudge Report alleged to have uncovered an extra marital relationship between John Kerry and an intern. This well respected news source, regularly checked out by journalists across the world began a rumour that turned out to be completely untrue.
The same can be said for other media formats, from print journalism to broadcast journalism. The un-questioning, by many journalists, of lies told before the war in Iraq, from WMD clams to the alleged links between Saddam Hussain and Al-Qaeeda, resulted in the readership losing faith in journalists after the lies were exposed, mainly due to no WMD being found in Iraq and the spurious decision to go to war. The media also convinced people that advocacy of going to Iraq was the correct decision, in failing to do what journalists are meant to do, that is to hold those in power to account.
Journalists have been unaccountable to readers, instead they respond to market pressures, consumerism and their corporate masters. We cannot blame new media for the death of journalism; we have to look at the systemic failures of traditional media as a whole. New media if anything has displayed a greater plurality of journalism, allowing for myriad views free from the constraints of corporate influence.
New media effectively is holding institutional journalism to account, exposing its sickness. The new breed is free from corporate influence dictating the agenda and newsroom practices. This new breed is not the threat - it is, potentially, the saviour.
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