Some questions I hope to answer: What issues should journalists – the media, the press – be focusing on today? How does it fall short/ succeed, in your eyes? If you ran a media or documentary company, how would you ensure the focus stayed where you believe it should?
I think this is a loaded question. So much of American culture- nearly all of it- is based around what sells. Even healthcare, schools, etc. are run like businesses with money at the forefront of the mind’s of administrators, and news is no exception. Corporate news is a problem because it pushes one agenda down from the top administration to tons of locations, which is never really appropriate. A bit from a comic I reference in my last blog post as well, Daniel Sloss, talks about how America has 330 million people, and you can try, and try, and try, but you can never accurately stereotype 330 million people. They are not all stupid, fat, or what have you, because there is too many to put a label on. Giving 330 million people the same news is like calling 330 million people fat. Communities are individualized, and unique, and intricate. Although keeping everyone in the same loop may seem like a good idea, it limits the number of perspectives that will round out your news consumption.
I was on the phone with my best friend from home, and out of curiosity I read her these prompts and asked her about her thoughts on the matter. He primary answer was that news systems should fact check intensely, and that they are many news organizations that present overtly fake news without any accountability. After she was done talking she asked me if her answer was too basic, as she is a graphic design major, and not a journalism major. I said yes, it is a basic answer. Ensuring objectivity and factual information is step one for good journalism. Accuracy is kind of the name of the game with journalism, and as journalists or journalism majors, we’re trained to understand that in our core. After all Intro to Journalism is basically just professors reiterating news, objectivity, news, accurate, news, factual, news, news-worthy, news, grammatically correct, etc. Being a specific major, journalism or something else, you get certain basic principles of what you study beaten into you, you forget that it is not common knowledge. I’m sure my friends has deep-rooted, core design concepts beaten into her, that she now thinks is common sense, even though I, an equally educated person, have no knowledge of formal design.
That being said, yes, the top priority for all news outlets should be accuracy. I was recently on the phone with Manny Garcia, the USA Today Ethics and Standards Editor, and he told me that the way I can be the best journalist possible, is to get your facts so correct and well-sourced that they are 100% indisputable. That is excellent advice for journalism students, so excellent that I think we forget that it is advice at all, instead of just common sense, but it should be the heart of all journalism.
Thinking about my own news company, this brings us back to my first point of America being a capitalist institution. I would need to make money, and another idea my friend brought up was how excellent journalistic institutions such as the NY Times, cost money, and are not available to everyone. I have no idea how this would work, but I would love to create a journalist outlet without requiring any funds. However, I don’t know if this is possible without ads, donations, or another large source of income to pay journalists and other expenses. It’s a fantastic idea, but I think there’s a reason it hasn’t been done yet.