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Meaning of objectivity in journalism ethics
Meaning of objectivity in journalism ethics
Meaning of objectivity in journalism ethics
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Interview Subject Description
The purpose of this interview is to discover how people obtain information about current events and to determine whether people use different sources for types of news. A test subject was interviewed for forty five minutes via Skype and asked a series of questions about his news seeking habits.
The subject, a male in his mid-fifties, participated in the interview. Employed as a letter carrier with Canada Post for the past thirty years, he is a Canadian citizen residing in British Columbia. The highest level of education held is a high school diploma.
Summary of News Seeking Habits
To summarize the subject’s news seeking habits, the interviewer, as Wildemuth suggests, searched for themes and patterns in the responses. As Ryan and Russell recommend, the interviewer searched for repetitions in the subject’s answers to make determinations about news seeking habits.
The subject expressed interest in current events and demonstrated understanding and familiarity with current events asked during the interview. The subject exhibited strong curiosity but remained an active participant. The subject expressed interest in national, international, and political, current events and demonstrated deep concern about events such as the Harper government’s plans for changes to public service pensions and familiarity with economic issues in Europe. Entertainment news did not garner the same interest level. While the subject did not dislike such news, he explained he would not typically seek it out and was “less interested in celebrities than other news.”
The interview revealed the subject did not go to different sources for different types of news. Rather, the subject is interested in an establi...
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...ried about whether he obtained news from social media, the subject did not understand. An illustrative example was used to help. Once told that “…some people obtain news from Face Book, one might have learned about Whitney Houston’s death from a status update…” the subject understood clearly. Throughout the interview, illustrative questions were valuable in clarify the meaning of some questions.
Works Cited
Patton, Michael Q. Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods. 2nd ed. California: Sage Publications, 1990. Print.
Ryan, Gery W, and H. Russell Bernard. “Techniques to Identify Themes in Qualitative Data.” Field Methods 15.1 (2003): 85-109. Web. 17 Feb. 2012.
Wildemuth, Barbara M. Applications of Social Research Methods to Questions in Information
and Library Science. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2009. Print.
Since the advent of television networks, Americans have relied on local and national newscasts to inform them of the world’s happenings. In the 1950’s there were no other mass informational outlets besides the network news and newspapers. Today we have the internet, which allows independent research, but the majority of Americans still depend on network and cable newscasts for their local, political, and foreign news. With the responsibility and power of informing an entire country, are television newscasts as reliable as most Americans assume them to be? Most Americans don’t consider where their news is coming from or who is producing it. Network and cable news are owned and operated by people and thus are not as objective and unbiased as we would like to think. In light of the war in Iraq and the most recent presidential election, critics of television network administration are voicing their concern for today’s presentation of the news. Increasingly more Americans are demanding a rehabilitation of newscasts, starting with ownership.
A good part of Outfoxed focuses on the company's blurring of news and commentary, how anchormen and reporters are encouraged to repeatedly use catch-phrases like "some people say..." as a means of editorializing within a supposedly objective news story; how graphics, speculation and false information are repeated over-and-over throughout the broadcast day until it appears to become fact, and in doing so spreads like a virus and copied on other networks. A PIPA/Knowledge Networks Poll points to glaring, fundamental misconceptions about the news perpetuated upon Fox viewers, versus information received from widely respected news-gathering organizations like NPR and PBS. Asked, for instance, "Has the U.S. found links between Iraq & al-Qaeda?" only 16% of PBS and NPR viewers answered "yes," but a frightening 67% of Fox viewers believed there had.
the most common one is to get the latest news. People like to stay informed, but what good is it when they are constantly being misinformed? The media tend to ‘profile’ just as much...
In “Reporting the News” by George C. Edwards III, Martin P. Wattenberg, and Robert L. Lineberry, the main idea is how the media determines what to air, where to get said stories that will air, how the media presents the news, and the medias effect on the general public. “Reporting The News” is a very strong and detailed article. The authors’ purpose is to inform the readers of what goes on in the news media. This can be inferred by the authors’ tone. The authors’ overall tone is critical of the topics that are covered. The tone can be determined by the authors’ strong use of transitions, specific examples, and phrases or words that indicate analysis. To summarize, first, the authors’ indicate that the media chooses its stories that will air
In “12 O’Clock News,” Elizabeth Bishop accentuates the difficulty involved in perceiving the “truth.” She utilizes a technique of constructing an exotic world out of objects that can be found in a newsroom. By defamiliarizing a newsroom, she questions our trust in what we perceive. Is it truly a journey to another world or just another perspective on something we are already familiar with? The intent of this transformation is to create a substitute for reality, analogous to the substitute reality which the media presents to us each day as its product, the “news.” The news media are capable of creating a world beyond what we see everyday, presenting us with what appears to be the truth about cultures we will never encounter firsthand. Bishop’s manipulation of a newsroom parallels the way the media distorts our perception of the world, and by doing so questions our ability to find our way out of this fog which is “reality.”
On September 11, 2011 people all over the world were able to witness one of the greatest tragedies in American history, but this time by way of live news coverage streaming on the television. Media for decades now has served, in various forms, as a way for people to stay connected to things that our happening locally and nationally in the world. Throughout the day many Americans turn to one or more different forms of media, whether it may be on television or on an electronic device to indulge in the daily news, either locally or nationally. According to PawResearch Center (2010), Americans are spending more time with the news than over much of the past decade due to the advancement of technology. The news serves as the source of information and from
The decision to examine the print news media was driven by the nature of the issue being explored. Previous research indicated (Nelkin, 1991; Stroman & Seltzer, 1989) that when it comes to complex and ambiguous issues (e.g., AIDS-HIV), print news provides more in-depth information than broadcast news. News consumers tend to consult print news for the details, whereas broadcast news provides the broad strokes. For instance, the Princeton Survey Research Associates (1996) study of AIDS coverage by the U.S. media found that the print media accorded more analytical coverage when compared to broadcast offerings.
News stories are covered several times and most of us do not even realize it. Although more recently many people get news in more similar mediums such as on the Internet because of the decline of newspapers. “Since 1940, the total number of daily newspapers has dropped more than 21 percent” (McIntosh and Pavlik, 119). Many times we do not realize the same story we read online was covered on our local news station and in our local newspaper, even further than that this same story is being covered in many different news stations, newspapers, and news sites all over the country and even the world. So what makes these stories different? Each time you read a news story from a different source something different happens to it. The different views and frames used by the source gives the reader a different take every time. I saw that first hand in my two stories. In my project I compared the same story of Mya Lyons, a nine year old girl who was stabbed to death.
Watching the newscast from a critical perspective made me more aware of the role local television news programs play in our lives. I now see that they give people a brief overview of the day's events on the national and local scenes. Because people in today's society have many demands on their time – work, family, school, leisure pursuits – they need to get their news quickly. They rely on their favorite television news programs to keep them informed. They should be aware, however, that the time constraints of a 30-minute local newscast limit the amount of information it can give its viewers. For more in-depth coverage they should supplement the TV news with other media sources, such as newspapers, magazines, and radio news programs. As long as viewers take the inherent limitations into account while they watch the evening news, it is a quick, easy way to stay informed on daily events and unfolding or ongoing stories in their own and surrounding communities.
Jackob, N. G. E. (201). No Alternatives? The Relationship between Perceived Media Dependency, Use of Alternative Information Sources, and General Trust in Mass Media. International Journal of Communication.4(1), 589-606.
"Journalists and Social Media | The Changing Newsroom." The Changing Newsroom | New Media. Enduring Values. Web. 05 Dec. 2010. .
Newspapers: this is an old type of media that informs us of the news that is happening in the world around us. It is a document that is issued daily c...
The evolution of media, from old media to new media, has transformed the way we understand the world around us. New media is interactive and is user-generated while old media is a more traditional way of communicating through television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, etc (Lecture Notes. January 12, 2011). New media gives us a new perspective by allowing us to interact with one another through the Internet. Media has become much more personal and diverse as user-generated content becomes more prominent in our lives (Lecture Notes. January 24, 2011). We are exposed to various viewpoints shape our understanding and knowledge of the social world, but does the form of media actually affect the way we understand the content which is presented to us? For my paper, I will determine whether or not the medium is the message by analyzing two different types of media sources and how they affect our understanding of the content. For my old media source I have chosen a news clip from the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric that deals with the ongoing Egyptian uprising. For my new media source I have chosen a video blog, or ‘vlog’, by an Egyptian man named Omar who discusses the crisis in Egypt from a personal point of view. Both media sources deal with the same topic, but result in different understandings of the crisis.
The purpose of journalism is to report a story accurately; simply to tell it like it is. Over the past two decades, with increased tension over political and religious ideologies, the media’s original purpose is being lost. Yes, being well-informed remains an asset in the world today. Our now, globally-focused world will always value knowledge and awareness. With the television, internet, newspaper- all mediums of entertainment- available at the snap of a finger, we have non-stop access to news. One problem with this is the blatant bias of news networks. Every news source has a bias. Viewers typically recognize the platform of the major sources, therefore deterring them from certain networks. When reporters feed viewers the same opinion through different stories, the viewer isn’t getting a balanced intake in terms of overall understanding. In today’s society, viewers are truly at the mercy of what those in authority provide. Think of George Orwell’s 1984 where the all-powerful “Big Brother,” through “The Party” oversees every little piece of information that passes through the telescreen (along with everything that passes by the telescreen on the other end.) The citizens of Oceania are essentially clueless to the truth because they have no access to it. The television: typically a source of entertainment, transformed itself into an instrument for controlling. Yes, the modern technology is
The impact of the internet on journalism is one area that continues to attract the attention of media scholars. The technology has brought forth a set of opportunities and challenges for conventional media (Garrison, 1996). The last ten years have seen a lot of inventions which have greatly altered the way people access and consume news. Audiences have also “developed more sophisticated and specific demands and tastes for news delivery, thanks in part to the explosion of social media and mobile technology.” (Kolodzy 2013)