The year is 2018 and college students everywhere are being asked why they are communications majors. The world has come to hate “the media,” though they still do not define who that is exactly.
Trust in journalists and the large reach of the news media started out in America after journalists began investigating difficult subjects as a way of exposing corruption.
Every communications major and history buff remembers the stories of muckraking journalists and writers like Upton Sinclair and Edward Murrow. If those names don’t ring a bell for you, maybe you’ll recognize Julian Assange, Ralph Nader and Woodward and Bernstein. All of these famous journalists have something in common, they didn’t back down and they continued to report the truth when people didn’t want to listen and did so until people did listen. They proved that the truth isn’t always pretty and sometimes it’s hard to swallow.
Journalists used to be commended and rewarded for doing their job. In today’s society, however, the words “fake news” have become common vernacular to talk about news coverage which is unpopular.
Don’t misunderstand me, I know that there are news outlets who do not fact check well and often publish pieces which can be misleading or misinformed, but hear me out when I tell you that journalists have standards and there are rules guiding them.
You don’t get to a large news corporation as a journalist by publishing lies. The fake news rhetoric is slowly chipping away at any trust society had for reporters. It makes the jobs of reporters harder and our job, as students wanting to go into such a hated field even more discouraging.
Being a writer in the fake news era doesn’t just mean battling hateful comments on the Internet. It means reading everything and re-writing every story. It means fact checking and triple checking with your sources. It means asking harder questions and being more aggressive in every aspect of story-gathering. It means facing the consequences of writing exposés that you were told to leave alone, “or else:” one of my personal favorites.
Even as student journalists, we face these challenges everyday and are already experiencing the onslaught of degrading responses from those around us as we prepare for our future professions.
But outside of the notepads and recorders, it’s still important to note what the fake news generation means for consumers of news– and if you are alive today and have a basic middle school education, you should be a consumer of news.
Journalists follow and live by ethical codes when writing, just to guarantee accurate and just reporting.
Ethics that are specific and pointed standards are commonplace for journalists; for example seeking truth and reporting it, minimizing harm, acting independently and being accountable to readers, news organizations and to other journalists.
No news corporation is willingly going to allow its journalists to desecrate any of these beliefs.
Every journalist bases their career around establishing and maintaining their credibility with the public; if the consumers can’t trust you, both sides are wasting their time and there is no point in reporting.
As a journalist, I encourage you to take in your news from multiple sources, not just one, so you can fully understand a situation. Only watching Fox or CNN and claiming the other is “fake” will only contribute to the growing distrust and distaste for the media.
So as more controversial topics are covered in the media, consider if the reason you claim it’s fake news is because it’s an opposing view, not because the journalist didn’t do their job.
Feel free to fact-check your media, and if you find something incorrect, contact the reporter, they want to grow. Just remember, they’re a journalist for a reason. Their values lie in an informed populous. They have standards.
News isn’t fake just because you disagree with it and referring to something as “fake news,” doesn’t make you seem intelligent.
