The State of the News Media 2005
Interesting reflections on the state of the American media by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Some quotes on the influence weblogs are having on the position of professional journalists are:
Today technology is transforming citizens from passive consumers of news produced by professionals into active participants who can assemble their own journalism each day from disparate elements. As they “google” for information, graze across an infinite array of outlets, read blogs or even write them, people are becoming their own editors, researchers, and reporters. What was called journalism is only one part of the mix, and the role of journalism as intermediary, as it is for other civic institutions, is weakening.
The blogosphere, while adding the richness of citizen voices, expands this culture of assertion exponentially, and brings to it an affirmative philosophy: publish anything, especially point of view, and the reporting and verification will occur afterward in the response of fellow bloggers. The result is sometimes true and sometimes false. Blogs helped unmask errors at CBS, but also spread the unfounded conspiracy theory that the GOP stole the presidential election in Ohio. All this makes it easier for those who would manipulate public opinion—government, interest groups and corporations—to deliver unchecked messages through independent outlets or their own faux-news web sites, video and text news releases and paid commentators. Next, computerized editing has the potential to take this further, blending all these elements into a mix.
Journalists aspire in this new landscape to be the one source that can best help citizens discover what to believe and what to disbelieve—a shift from the role of gatekeeper to that of authenticator or referee. To do that, however, it appears news organizations would have to make some significant changes. Among them, they may have to document their reporting process more openly so that audiences can decide for themselves whether to believe it.
[x]#1136 fan donderdag 17 maart 2005 @ 12:48:04
