Week 5: Response to Discussion One and Two
Michael Angelo
Michael Angelo
FridayFeb 9 at 10:12am
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Nathaniel,
I believe that bloggers and journalists should both be held to the same standards. As Stovall (2014) states, "A good blog can be entertaining with good writing, but information builds audiences" (p. 129). Therefore, if the blogger writes biased information, the information can be spread, such as to large news organizations.
According to Jacquette (2007), “Internet Web sites can be a force for enormous good or evil, depending, like all technologies, on how it is used" (p. 8). If a citizen journalists reports biased news, the news could affect the public in a bad way. As I scroll through Facebook, I see biased news reports from citizen journalists.
If citizen journalists and bloggers do not follow any ethics, the public could, as we have recently witnessed, start a protest that could turn into a riot. Many of the news reports I have read from citizen journalists, if not all truth, have been twisted from truthful news reports. On the other hand, not all citizen journalists are spreading biased information to the public, and the professionals have taken up the charge, spreading their biases reported as "facts."
Shame on them. They should know better!
Social media has made it harder for the public to distinguish if an article is biased. In the last couple of days, I witnessed people on Facebook create a fake news release. The site is just for people to create fake news releases. However, people are taking them as truthful information.
If the person reads to the end of the article, the reader will see that it is a prank. However, people read a little bit of the beginning of the article and believe what the person wrote.
References
Jacquette, D. (2007). Journalistic Ethics: Moral Responsibility in the Media [VitalSource Bookshelf version]. Retrieved from https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9780558693404
Stovall, J. G. (2014-07-01). Writing for the Mass Media, 9th Edition [VitalSource Bookshelf version]. Retrieved from https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781323198841