By Abena Bediako
Journalists don’t need a license to practice journalism. The profession does not fall into the same category as being a doctor or a lawyer. Journalism requires a method, almost scientific in fact.
But one major obstacle often hindering reporters is the internet, where a high volume of misinformation and disinformation circulates. Almost anyone can tweet a picture of a disaster or event and claim it’s credible.
The pressure of being first with breaking news sometimes takes precedence over fact-checking and ensuring the validity of the story “journalists” report on. And all it takes is one person to spread the inaccuracy to gain some real traction.
Before going further, I feel it’s important to distinguish the difference between misinformation and disinformation. Disinformation is when people intentionally create false or misleading information to make money, have political influence, or maliciously cause trouble or harm. Misinformation is when people share disinformation but don’t realize it’s false or misleading.
The current war in Ukraine is a great example. BBC Monitoring posted an article on their site, the headline reading, “Ukraine invasion: False claims the war is a hoax go viral.” Below the byline is an image of a man who appears to be a wounded soldier. However, upon further examination, the photo derives from a Ukraine TV series titled Contamin.
The photo comes from the production set taken in December 2020, more than a year before the Ukraine war. Fact-checking goes beyond words. Images and videos require equal scrutiny, but things get difficult when the article and images accumulate 1,000 plus “likes” and retweets, making the story seem credible.
It does not help journalists either when people with political power openly discredit the work of reporters and claim they are solely responsible for spreading lies and inaccuracies.
The media holds a bad rep, especially for those it does not favor. The term “fake news” became extremely popular during the Trump administration. It even went as far as providing inaccurate information about COVID-19 and claimed there was massive fraud during the 2020 election.
Journalists are the watchdogs of democracy, and if people can’t trust news publications to keep them informed on society, who will they turn to?
There is a continuous development of unqualified “reporters” creating blog websites that only serve to spread misinformation. This issue needs to be addressed more.
There is a clear line between tabloid news and actual reporting, but the internet has made some of the lines a bit murky.
In Misinformation and Herd Behavior in Media Markets, written by Bartosz Wilczek, the author states, “tabloids will allocate more attention to political and business misinformation than rival broadsheets. Thereby, they will make the misinformation more publicly available and, therefore, put more pressure on broadsheets to allocate attention to the misinformation as well.”
Publications and media outlets feel pressure to generate more attention. The media lives to serve its audience, therefore they need to find ways to keep them engaged. Some of their tactics show in the speed of a published story or the sensationalism of a story. However, neither of these should take precedence over the truth.
You don’t need a license to practice journalism, but you do need to stick with the journalistic method. Journalists need to be the ones to remind the public what good reporting entails.
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