By: Bella Michaels
Post-civil war America became less about political partisanship and more about serving citizens with news they needed to know to re-create journalism for a new nation.
Today, many journalists are focusing more on their personal agendas rather than reporting fair news to create a more civil society.
In a world that revolves around social media, public trust in journalists has decreased to 44 percent in the U.S., according to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center.
There is a lack of balance in many news stories. It has become all about demographic targeting and agenda-setting.
Males covering males, women covering feminism, liberals setting anti-President Donald Trump agendas and conservatives counter-reporting the liberals. This kind of reporting is often done in an unfair way because it stems from an underlying bias.
It’s a detrimental cycle that is destroying the integrity of journalism.
Television news played a central role in transmitting information following the devastating 9/11 terrorist attacks. Social responsibility during that time was crucial, since everyone in the nation was turning to the media for information to reduce uncertainty and negative emotions.
Now, it’s not just our nation– but the entire world– that is suffering through the COVID-19 pandemic and there hasn’t been a higher time of uncertainty.
Rather than dropping partisan ties during this serious time of plague, the bias has only escalated in a divided nation.
The New York Times science and health reporter Donald McNeil Jr. gave an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in which he blamed the country’s high number of cases on President Donald Trump. “Yes, it is the President’s fault,” said McNeil Jr. “It is not China’s fault.”
It has become a trend to blame everything on President Trump. The Chinese government initially concealed the outbreak and didn’t release key information as soon as it could have.
At the epicenter of the disease, the city of Wuhan threw a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people, and millions of people began traveling through for Lunar New Year celebrations, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press.
Liberal media outlets are still focusing their stories on President Trump and finding ways to blame him, while conservative media outlets are focusing on favoring him.
It’s getting tiring, to be quite frank.
If I wasn’t an educated journalist with a bachelor’s degree and now almost a master’s, I wouldn’t have trusted the media like I do. Because I wouldn’t know any better.
Since most people aren’t taught which news mediums are objective, like the Associated Press or NPR, they assume that every journalist does their job like ones at Fox News or CNN.
I don’t ever find myself covering politics, but if I did, I would be fair in my reporting.
If I spoke to President Trump, I wouldn’t attack him passive-aggressively in my interview questions the way that some reporters do, or the way he responds to most reporters. I also wouldn’t butter him up.
I would focus on his quotes and relay the message he is giving.
While it is important to maintain your authority and not let someone bully you, it is just as important to not stoop down to that person’s level.
Smile and nod. The less you talk back, the more you are in control of yourself and the situation.
I’m not talking about talk-show hosts or television personalities– they can talk all they want because their job isn’t to be an ethical journalist. Their job is to entertain.
As long as there are journalists around that are focused on agenda-setting that favors their station’s beliefs, the public trust in journalism will continue to decrease.
This is unfortunate because most people do not realize the significance of journalism and its impact on the world.
It is central to how we live.
Without journalism, the world would be chaotic, especially these days when social media has given ordinary people a voice to produce their own content for the world to see. There would be no regulation.
How would we differentiate accurate news from fake news?
True journalists investigate, speak to multiple sources, and find documentation to support the news they provide in their story. Without personal opinion or benefit.
In a world where most people are not educated about how journalism functions, it is important that we, as journalists, do not prove the doubters right.
The public must be educated on the integrity and excellence of journalism and there must be a change in the way many are reporting, but it’s easier said than done.
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