Good Journalism Vs Bad Journalism Essay

Methods The research for this paper was obtained from scholarly articles, modern journalistic articles, and statistics. Modern journalistic articles provided works to analyze to find examples of good journalism versus bad journalism. Scholarly articles will provide other opinions on what is contributing to the decline in public trust and opinion of media. Finally, statistics gave context and support for the claims that journalism is declining as well as more specific findings.

Analysis

Media Bias First, one of the most frequently cited reasons that Americans distrust or dislike the media is bias, the partial or prejudiced reporting of a story (Dugger). In fact, 77 percent of Americans in 2012 said that the media “tend to favor one side”

In the United States, consumers value objective and fair reporting and condemn journalists who do not follow this standard (Bennett, 2015). Because Americans do not see journalists fulfilling this obligation, there is “a palpable sense that we have somehow strayed from a golden era of press objectivity, and a correspondent longing to return to these days” (Bennett, 2015). Yet history does not support this nostalgia: media in the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was overtly partisan, with different sources representing different sides of issues and even sponsorships by political parties (Baughman, 2011). The desire for an objective media arose in the late 1950s and early 1960s for reasons including the desires by the press to allow advertisement by both left-leaning and right-leaning entities and to appeal to a diverse group of readers (Bennett, 2015). This sentiment eventually progressed into an expectation for journalists to maintain bias-free reporting, with the Society for Professional Journalist’s Code of Ethics stating that “ethical journalism should be accurate and fair” and journalists should “act independently” and avoid anything that may “compromise integrity and impartiality” (“Society of Professional Journalists”, 2014). Thus, both the media and consumers expect fair, balanced, and objective