Final essays

Here we go!

1. Our textbook, The Big Picture, discusses the definition of objectivity in minute detail—all the while stating that it is impossible to obtain. While I agree that true objectivity is an impossibility for inherently biased humans, I also believe that it is a journalist’s responsibility to never stop striving to obtain it. In my opinion, and in simple terms, objectivity is the ability to see past one’s own prejudices and emotions. Journalists need to remain impartial, in order to be fair to all sides of a story, to all the people we are representing, to businesses, to politicians, to political and religious views. If journalism lacks objectivity it becomes nothing more than a means to advocate its advertisers, or a way to spread its journalists’ ideas and opinions, rather than the truth. Because the truth is, essentially, what we aim for. We can’t tell all of it sometimes, and other times we get it wrong, but our audience is expecting us to write honestly and fairly. And for the most part, that is what we do.
Opinion, however, does have a place in journalism. Otherwise, how could we have things like editorials, letters to the editor, analysis and “How-to” columns, and other staples of the sort? However, these sections of a paper are easy to identify, because they are labeled “Opinion” or “Editorial.” The transparency of bias makes it acceptable. As long as opinion is backed by fact, and isn’t vulgar or offensive, it has its place in the designated sections of newspapers.
However, journalists must take care that they do not confuse opinion articles with the feature articles and “hard news” that they cover. If an article is not explicitly stated as an opinion, and a reporter includes spin or covers one side more favorably than the other, or even omits key information, it is lying. And since the public needs to look to journalism as a source of honest information, spinning stories that are supposed to be unbiased crushes that trust.
Ultimately, the issue comes down to the fact that although journalism is a noble and trustworthy ideal, journalists are human, and are therefore prone to bias, error, and confusing fact with opinion. As reporters, we obviously have to be very interested in the politics and issues of our day, or we would get very bored covering the stories. We must care, or we wouldn’t have chosen the profession we are in. And since we are so invested in these issues, we cannot help but have strong opinions about them. However, that doesn’t mean the journalists need to despair of never being able to write a fair article. Journalists must just be aware of their own opinions and biases and compensate for them. If journalists feel too strongly, or if they find themselves too invested in a story, they may want to ask to be removed from the story.
I know that I have strong opinions on most of the issues of this day. However, because I know this, I hope to recognize my biases when they threaten to appear. If they do, I will make certain that I compensate for them by covering both sides equally, and by removing any speech in my article that could represent either side in a positive or negative light. And if I find that I feel too strongly about an issue to represent all sides, I would ask to be removed from the story.
2. The Big Picture defines journalistic excellence as having three basic components: truth, context, and independence. Truth must be present, obviously, because without it, journalism becomes gossip or other propaganda, and it loses the public’s trust. Truth must include not only what the facts are, but a comprehensive collection of facts. Journalistic excellence requires context, because without it, the truth just becomes a laundry list of facts. Context explains the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ to the audience. Why the readers should care, and the historical, political, or religious context the article should be read in are all explained through the context of an article. Finally, excellent journalism needs one more aspect that makes truth and context possible: independence. Independence from political structures, from candidates, from businesses, and the list goes on. Although as it states in our textbook, “Because the news is a social product, it can never be produced in a vacuum” (Scheuer 48). However, journalists must strive to remain independent of any propaganda or agenda.
These are the three basic concepts of excellence as outlined in our textbook, and I tend to agree. However, I also think that there are a few more aspects that can make journalism excellent. I believe that often, courage and determination are both necessary to uncover facts and discover stories. Journalists must constantly be watching for stories that could uncover scandal and help their readers, or even just articles that would be informative and important. I think that transparency of bias (if there is bias) is necessary, so the audience recognizes that it isn’t straight truth they are reading. And I also think that passion is necessary for great journalism. If we as journalists don’t care about what we’re writing about, we can hardly expect our audience to.
The newspaper I read online was The Bakersfield Californian, which is my hometown’s only paper. Overall, I thought their articles were mediocre. As far as I could tell, the newspaper followed the three basic aspects of journalism. They were truthful and independent, as near as I could tell. I also saw contextual articles in their paper—where they described the history or importance of an article. Everything basic was there; however, it lacked other, superior elements that would have made it a truly great newspaper. While the stories were honest, they were typical and, frankly, boring. Their journalists didn’t seem to be taking any risks, and if they had passion about their articles, it certainly didn’t show most of the time. Most of the time, the articles seemed free from bias, but I did notice that the number of favorably conservative editorials and opinion pieces were overwhelming. Many articles also seemed to have a somewhat conservative spin, especially in the way headlines were phrased. So while I think that it was a decent example of journalism, The Bakersfield Californian was by no means an example of excellent journalism.
3. “Factual truth, like anything else, can be overrated in some contexts—but journalism is not one of those contexts. [However] a strictly accurate but superficial account of an important event is not necessarily better, in terms of the overall public good, than one with greater explanatory power that contains some minor inaccuracies or even basic untruths.” –The Big Picture (62)
The above quote accurately describes both how important truth in journalism is, and how difficult it is to describe and obtain. Absolute truth is not obtainable in such a human pursuit as journalism. However, our textbook does a very good job exploring the aspects of journalistic truth. The first aspect is that journalistic truth is a pragmatic truth—as journalists, we ignore the fact that we all see different truths, even when witnessing the same incident, and that it is sometimes impossible to reconcile those differences (Scheuer 63). Otherwise, we’d constantly be caught up in retelling stories, rewriting articles, and otherwise revising and being uncertain because there is no Truth with a capital ‘T’ in journalism. Everything is relative, because everything is human.
Secondly, the truth must be accurate, but accuracy doesn’t necessarily equal truth. Accuracy means a list of factual events and quotes. The journalistic truth incorporates accurate aspects into its storytelling, so it is honest, but not boring. As Scheuer states, “We must collect the dots and connect the dots. . . Journalistic truth begins with accuracy, but quickly expands beyond (and with) the facts, in pursuit of vague and imperfectly obtainable goals as context, balance, proportion, and relevance” (67). Therefore journalism must be accurate, truthful, and factual, but it most ultimately strive for much more than that.
And the reason journalism must strive for these “vague and imperfectly obtainable goals” is so it can be of service to the public. A laundry list of facts would just be boring. Good storytelling without truth is propaganda or gossip. Therefore, the combination of fact and context contributes to citizens’ knowledge of issues like the workings of their government, or about companies, accidents, or anything that could be considered news.
4. Newspapers and television news operations are dwindling because of the explosion of electronic resources. Websites like Yahoo! and Google replaced the necessity of having to subscribe to a paper; and once papers realized that they were quickly losing clientele to these websites, newspapers put up sites of their own to compete. However, that meant that people needed to subscribe even less to the newspaper, since they could get nearly everything online. Not to mention websites like Twitter, Netvibes, and CraigsList, which group the news and allows people to communicate quickly were driving papers out of business quickly. These sites take away both subscription revenue and even advertisement revenue from newspapers and television news operations, so it is no wonder they are having a difficult time staying afloat.
While I think it is a shame that we seem to be losing the paper quality of news—and while I plan to subscribe to papers for as long as they are around in the tactile sense, I believe that eventually, everything will be paperless. Newspapers already have websites that either allow the public free access, or that require a subscription to access all of the site’s contents. I think that this is the future of newspapers, but I don’t think that the papers will ever get their subscription costs back, since it is too easy for customers to simply get their news elsewhere if they can’t find it for free on their favorite newspaper’s website. Newspapers can, however, still collect some advertisement revenue online.
I think that going into journalism right now is a risky endeavor; however, I also think that people are always going to need news, and they are always going to need honest reporters to gather it and write it down. So I think that, while this is a difficult and turbulent time for papers, they will not disappear entirely—and neither will my job. Five or ten years from now, I expect that reporting and writing the news is going to be very different, but I think that I will still be doing it. Perhaps I will have to include hyperlinks and video streams into my articles. Or perhaps my articles will have to be either very national, or very local. Either way, I do still think I will have a job as a reporter—otherwise, I wouldn’t be in this major.
5. When I read this question, the first aspect I think of to include in my personal code of conduct is humility. I think that if I, as a journalist, constantly keep in mind the fact that I writing and reporting to perform a service, not to show off how awesome I am, or how much I know, then many other aspects of my personal code will fall in place. If I have humility, I will be much less inclined to want to spin a story—because I will not have the arrogance to believe that my personal opinion has more value than the truth. If I have humility, I will strive for objectivity, even when I know that it is an ideal that cannot be reached. I will keep trying, because I will not consider myself to be greater than this ideal of unbiased reporting.
Accuracy and sensitivity to audience are two other aspects that I consider to be very important. Accuracy for obvious reasons—because I do believe that journalism is, in part, a public service, and so I will strive to tell the truth as accurately as possible. Sensitivity to audience is a little trickier, and at first seems to even conflict with the idea of truthful journalism. However, I think that journalists can still be honest, even while remembering whom they are writing to.
I also believe that journalists need to have passion, initiative, and courage, to do their job well. My personal code of conduct includes the persistence and initiative to find stories and the passion and courage to research them well, and to find the facts needed to make it valid and interesting to my readers.

Thanks for the memories

So. End of the semester. Which means the end of Comms 239. (Oh, and yeah, that title was a blatant ripoff of the song, "Thanks for the Memories," by FallOut Boy.)

I really enjoyed the class--a lot more than I thought I would. And actually, I had pretty high expectations for it in the first place.

Not many classes outstrip my initial expectations, but when they do, it's fantastic.

It wasn't just the subject matter of the course--although I enjoyed that too. It was the structure, how we were all learning together, how we discussed more than were lectured at. I think that that was the most effective way of learning.

Instead of being told what good journalism was, we talked it over, examined it from different angles and different points of view, and we were all able to reach our own conclusions. I was able to fully examine this question, though I can't really post about it until the final exam is due on Monday.

Instead of taking a multiple choice test about ethics in journalism, we were presented with the facts and the history, and we decided for ourselves how far was too far, and what we would and wouldn't do for the sake of journalism and our careers.

And our final exam is just one more example of how freely structured and learning-based this class really was/is. It's not that the final exam is easy--actually, it's the exam I'm most concerned about. But the challenge to think for myself, to be brave enough to take a stance (and stick to that stance) on issues that will affect my career in journalism, is why I liked the class. The challenge made it worth it.

The blogging was a lot of fun too. I enjoyed reading everybody's blogs, and I appreciate all the comments I got on my own blog.

So I guess the whole point of this post was to say thank you and good-bye. Thanks everyone for sharing your opinions in class, and thank you for challenging me. I had a great time in this class, and hopefully I'll see all of you in journalism classes!

Journalism and citizens

Doing the NewsU assignment on trauma reminded me of one crucial element of journalism that I think many of us (myself included) tend to forget.

We, as journalists, are not grappling just with integrity, honesty, and bias issues. Our stories are not just about triumphs or defeats or corruption or politicians.

Our stories are about people.

I tend to forget this because of how religiously I read the New York Times--or, at least, how religiously I read the main and business sections of the NYTimes. This paper only covers the very big stories, about very big people. And when I'm constantly reading about celebrities or politicians or world leaders, I tend to forget that they are actually human.

The "President" doesn't seem human; he seems like this untouchable force with unknown authority. Congress doesn't seem like it's made up of people; it seems like a very faraway group of beings who decide my future and who are ultimately removed from my life and my problems.

And don't even get me started on the Supreme Court.

But as I watched the NewsU video, I realized that these men, powerful as they are, are only human. And not only that; I realized that for the most part, I won't be covering those huge stories. I'll likely be dealing with people who have had a terrible experience--like a death in the family, like living through an earthquake or a hurricane, or having their identity stolen.

I think that as journalists, we need to keep in mind that, while it's good to have morals and ethics based on truth and honesty, we are telling stories about people.

RE: Mumbai Journalism

In response to our class blogging assignment, I have this url:

Saturday, Nov. 19th blogpost

And that is all.

The merging of new and old journalism

So.

All this time, our journalism class (and major newspapers and a plethora of websites) has been predicting the end of traditional journalism. We recognize the fact that "New Media," aka the online community of bloggers, reporters, and citizens who feed off one another and report news (and rumors) at startling speeds, is more convenient, faster, and, best of all, free.

The response to the crisis in Mumbai is an excellent example of citizen journalism taken to a whole new level, thanks to the instant connection the internet provides.

And while I'm fascinated and generally enthralled by this new media, I admit that I've been sad to see traditional print journalism begin to fade. Of course newspapers are far from eradicated, and I don't know that they will ever be so. But I do know that nearly all I hear about newspapers these days is that profits are falling, advertisements are falling, layoffs are rising, etc.

However, a recent article by redOrbit has made me think that perhaps the situation doesn't have to be this drastic. Perhaps our changing news media isn't all about the new, technologically advanced, interactive media versus the tried-and-true, honest and verified traditional print media.

Maybe the two complement each other.

RedOrbit reports that Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post (a website with the byword, "The Internet Newspaper: News Blogs Video Community) believes that new media brings out the best in traditional journalism.

Huffington claims that the transparency and proximity is what new media brings to the table of traditional journalism.

“The new cannot entirely replace the old nor produce the results of time-honored investigative journalism,” Huffington said.

She also said that bloggers who take to heart the tradition of fact-checking and having multiple sources are the ones who rise to the top in the online world.

And of course bloggers and 'citizen journalists' can (and often do) get the facts wrong, it is still true that the best ones, the ones who get the facts right, are the bloggers that everyone listens to.

So what does everyone think? Is this just a bunch of hopeful drivel, meant to placate old world journalists? Or could this combination of new media and traditional journalism work to form a type of journalism that is both transparent and accurate, both proximate and insightful, both interactive and resourceful?

Mumbai and Citizen Journalism

I'm sure that everyone knows what's happened in Mumbai by now. If you don't, or you somehow managed to miss the 195 and counting casualties, as usual, Wikipedia has all the answers. Go educate yourself.

But for those of you who know about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, I'd like to discuss the role the web played in the reporting the attacks. I was struck as I went to website after website, blog after blog, as I received tweet after tweet, about the attacks. I could see pictures, watch video feed from cell phones, and I knew about every casualty or grenade before CNN reported it.

It was terrifying and strangely fantastical. To be able to see every picture, to hear every report of terror (no matter if it was real or imagined), it was almost as though I was there. I was too frozen myself to tweet, and even if I wasn't, there was nothing I could have added to the thousands and thousands of reports pouring in every five seconds.

CNN.com has an article that discusses the impact tweeting and blogging and the internet in general had on the attacks and the world's reaction to them. It was interesting to read, but it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know.

Citizen journalism led the reports of the Mumbai attacks. Some sources say that it was helpful, other say it helped the terrorists, and still others say that the rumors and incorrect reports caused more panic than there would have been otherwise. Of course, there were thousands of inaccuracies and exaggerations. But there was also real, honest information that kept me more informed than any news website.

I am frankly shocked by the online community's cooperation and impact. Some blogs posted about hospitals that needed blood, other were there so people could ask after missing family members. Someone even managed to capture a picture of one of the terrorists.

I know that some people are derisive or even angry about the online response. But I am just enthralled by how quickly and decisively the information came to me. As soon as I wanted something, it was there, just a click or a Google search away.

I know that I normally ask questions at the end of my blogs, but I only wanted to discuss how fascinating the web response to the attacks were.

Freedom of Speech

I have another question for everyone.

It was sparked by this article, in Times-Standard. Apparently, The Bark, the Eureka High School newspaper, had all of its issues pulled from newstands after some students and parents protested the nude drawing in the paper.

Student journalists complain that they were very mature in the article and the discussion of the art. Parents and a few other students wonder if this really belongs in a high school paper.

The problem, of course, is not that they were censored (since school papers are all the time). It is that the student journalists received permission to print the article and art, and then once protests arose, the principal ordered a recall.

There were several other issues discussed as well, such as autonomous papers vs. administration-reviewed, and whether or not it's legal for the principal to censor.

But as I read this article, my concern was with the application of freedom of speech. I understand, of course, that there are a few instances where absolute freedom of speech is something we give up in exchange for a more ordered, peaceful existence. Racial slurs, false accusations, and profanity are just a few example of free speech that we censor for the 'greater good'.

I know that we need these restrictions, or speech would equal chaos.

And as I read the article, I wondered how early freedom of speech starts. Obviously, different environments call for different behavior. At home, at school, at work, around relatives, around friends--each environment calls for different restrictions.

And it's all very complicated.

Okay, now that I'm done being really mature and sensitive about the exceptions, now I'll say what I really think.

Obviously, if the administrators had censored the drawing before the newspaper was printed, I wouldn't complain. It wouldn't even be a news story. But the art was approved, and then when a few people complained, it was yanked from publication.

The money had already been spent, the papers had already been printed. And while people are well within their rights to complain, if the article was tastefully done and it didn't disturb the learning environment unduly, then I don't think it should be an issue. If students don't like it, it's not like the artwork was on the front page. No one who doesn't want to look at it has to.

But that's just my opinion.

So what does everyone else think? And not just about this specific case, either. In general, in high school, in the adult world--where and when does censorship start and end?