A ‘revolution’ has erupted and there’s no prediction it will end soon. The revolution I’m talking about is ongoing in practically every news outlet. More than ever, there’s pressure on the media and everyone who thrives on it. The maxim today seems to be: being exclusive is more important than checking your sources.
To be false is more attractive than to be true. Journalism is the victim of international turmoil. The President of the free world is pointing fingers at journalists, not to mention the fact that media houses are facing harsh challenges.
Newspapers are experiencing a sharp decline in much-needed revenue as news has had to adapt to new digital formats. Journalists have not fallen victim only because of the recent election result in the US. The social media revolution which has been fomenting for quite some time is a double-edged sword.
‘Citizen Journalism’ is an efficient means for professional journalists to acquire information and connect with sources more directly in less time. As observers and readers, we have ended up in a situation that seems to be a frenetic feeding frenzy for information.
Because of this, we have reached a dangerous point of becoming desensitised irrespective of whether the information reported is true or not.
This rush to publish and be damned acts like a guillotine to journalism because stories need to be researched and analysed before being published
The consequence of this is that the basis of a democratic state is failing in producing sound arguments from its citizens because the information they get is incorrect.
This pushes newsrooms to race against time to search for stories and disseminate them as fast as possible. It’s these scenarios that are causing distress to journalism’s role in a democracy.
Having a well-informed public is at the very heart of democracy but when the public is blind in the face of sensationalist and misleading stories, one cannot expect the so-called informed public to arrive at proper decisions.
This rush to publish and be damned acts like a guillotine to journalism because stories need to be researched and analysed before being published. But that’s not happening. Either a story is put together in a matter of minutes or else, one risks losing readership. This mounting pressure has smothered the gatekeepers of yore, leaving the door wide open for fake news to steal the limelight.
Long before the digital transformation blazed a trail, fake news was already alive and kicking.
Digitisation has helped false stories to race through cyber space and reach a wider audience. Speaking about the audience, education is an asset when conducting a content analysis of what we’re exposed to.
False or misleading news can be quite clear if the audience knows what real news looks like but there are others who end up victims of fake news and worse still they probably help the falsity to spread even further.
We ought to be aware that not everything we read is real and reliable. The future looks blurry because the irony is we rarely get untainted news, so we’re left not only not believing what we read but not trusting anyone.
The least we can do as readers is take on the role of watchdogs and support quality journalism.
Josef Cutajar is a third-year student reading for an honours degree in Media and Communications at the University of Malta.