Concepts of the appropriate role for journalism vary between countries. In some nations, the news media are controlled by government intervention and are not fully independent. In others, the news media are independent of the government but instead operate as private industry motivated by profit. In addition to the varying nature of how media organizations are run and funded, countries may have differing implementations of laws handling the freedom of speech and libel cases.
The advent of the Internet and smartphones has brought significant changes to the media landscape in recent years. This has created a shift in the consumption of print media channels, as people increasingly consume news through e-readers, smartphones, and other personal electronic devices, as opposed to the more traditional formats of newspapers, magazines, or television news channels. News organizations are challenged to fully monetize their digital wing, as well as improvise on the context in which they publish in print. Newspapers have seen print revenues sink at a faster pace than the rate of growth for digital revenues.
Production
Journalistic
conventions vary by country. In the United States, journalism is
produced by media organizations or by individuals. Bloggers are often,
but not always, journalists. The Federal Trade Commission
requires that bloggers who write about products received as promotional
gifts to disclose that they received the products for free. This is
intended to eliminate conflicts of interest and protect consumers.
In the US, many credible news organizations are incorporated entities;
have an editorial board; and exhibit separate editorial and advertising
departments. Many credible news organizations, or their employees,
often belong to and abide by the ethics of professional organizations
such as the American Society of News Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters & Editors, Inc., or the Online News Association. Many news organizations also have their own codes of ethics that guide journalists' professional publications. For instance, The New York Times code of standards and ethics is considered particularly rigorous.
When crafting news stories, regardless of the medium, fairness
and bias are issues of concern to journalists. Some stories are intended
to represent the author's own opinion; others are more neutral or
feature balanced points-of-view. In a print newspaper, information is
organized into sections and the distinction between opinionated and
neutral stories is often clear. Online, many of these distinctions break
down. Readers should pay careful attention to headings and other design
elements to ensure that they understand the journalist's intent.
Opinion pieces are generally written by regular columnists or appear in a
section titled "Op-ed", while feature stories, breaking news, and hard news stories typically make efforts to remove opinion from the copy.
According to Robert McChesney,
healthy journalism in a democratic country must provide an opinion of
people in power and who wish to be in power, must include a range of
opinions and must regard the informational needs of all people.
Many debates center on whether journalists are "supposed" to be
"objective" and "neutral"; arguments include the fact that journalists
produce news out of and as part of a particular social context, and that
they are guided by professional codes of ethics and do their best to
represent all legitimate points of view. Additionally, the ability to
render a subject's complex and fluid narrative with sufficient accuracy
is sometimes challenged by the time available to spend with subjects,
the affordances or constraints of the medium used to tell the story, and
the evolving nature of people's identities.
Forms
There are several forms of journalism with diverse audiences. Thus, journalism is said to serve the role of a "fourth estate", acting as a watchdog
on the workings of the government. A single publication (such as a
newspaper) contains many forms of journalism, each of which may be
presented in different formats. Each section of a newspaper, magazine,
or website may cater to a different audience.
Photojournalists photographing President Barack Obama of the US in November 2013.
Photo and broadcast journalists interviewing government official after a building collapse in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. March 2013.
Some forms include:
- Access journalism – journalists who self-censor and voluntarily cease speaking about issues that might embarrass their hosts, guests, or powerful politicians or businesspersons.
- Advocacy journalism – writing to advocate particular viewpoints or influence the opinions of the audience.
- Broadcast journalism – written or spoken journalism for radio or television.
- Citizen journalism – participatory journalism.
- Data journalism – the practice of finding stories in numbers, and using numbers to tell stories. Data journalists may use data to support their reporting. They may also report about uses and misuses of data. The US news organization ProPublica is known as a pioneer of data journalism.
- Drone journalism – use of drones to capture journalistic footage.
- Gonzo journalism – first championed by Hunter S. Thompson, gonzo journalism is a "highly personal style of reporting".
- Interactive journalism – a type of online journalism that is presented on the web
- Investigative journalism – in-depth reporting that uncovers social problems. Often leads to major social problems being resolved.
- Photojournalism – the practice of telling true stories through images
- Sensor journalism – the use of sensors to support journalistic inquiry.
- Tabloid journalism – writing that is light-hearted and entertaining. Considered less legitimate than mainstream journalism.
- Yellow journalism (or sensationalism) – writing which emphasizes exaggerated claims or rumors.
Social Media
The rise of social media has drastically changed the nature of journalistic reporting, giving rise to so-called citizen journalists.
In a 2014 study of journalists in the United States, 40% of
participants claimed they rely on social media as a source, with over
20% depending on microblogs to collect facts.
From this, the conclusion can be drawn that breaking news nowadays
often stems from user-generated content, including videos and pictures
posted online in social media.
However, though 69.2% of the surveyed journalists agreed that social
media allowed them to connect to their audience, only 30% thought it had
a positive influence on news credibility.
Consequently, this has resulted in arguments to reconsider
journalism as a process distributed among many authors, including the
socially mediating public, rather than as individual products and
articles written by dedicated journalists.
Because of these changes, the credibility ratings of news outlets
has reached an all-time low. A 2014 study revealed that only 22% of
Americans reported a "great deal" or "quite a lot of confidence" in
either television news or newspapers.
Fake News
"Fake news" is also deliberately untruthful information which can often spread quickly on social media or by means of fake news websites.
It is often published to intentionally mislead readers to ultimately
benefit a cause, organization or an individual. A glaring example was
the proliferation of fake news in social media during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and lies have been circulated under the
guise of news reports to benefit specific candidates. One example is a
fabricated report of Hillary Clinton's email which was published by a
non-existent newspaper called The Denver Guardian.
Many critics blamed Facebook for the spread of such material. Its news
feed algorithm in particular was identified by Vox as the platform where
the social media giant exercise billions of editorial decisions every
day.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, has acknowledged the company's
role in this problem: in a testimony before a combined Senate Judiciary
and Commerce committee hearing on April 20, 2018, he said:
It's clear now that we didn't do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy.
Readers can often evaluate credibility of news by examining the credibility of the underlying news organization.
The phrase was popularized and inaccurately used by Donald Trump during his presidential campaign to discredit what he perceived as negative news coverage of his candidacy and then presidency.
Propaganda Compared with Fake News
The
definition of 'Fake News' above, could also be applied to the general
category of 'Propaganda' when it is applied to the field of political
reporting. Because a large part of political journalism involves analysis,
and not simple reporting of what is said, or presented, writers and
journalists have the opportunity to present specific kinds of analysis
which can favor one ideological, or political position over another; it
can also be used to represent personalities in
favorable/unfavorable ways. If the definition of propaganda includes
misrepresentation of facts, and deliberate distortions of narrative, or
applied emphasis not necessarily contained in the original, then
Fake News falls squarely inside the parameters of Propaganda also. It
could be argued that true objectivity is not really possible to
produce, when it comes to presenting analysis of political activity, any
individual observer and journalist is going to perceive what they
experience through the lens of their own political bias, this of course
is the case with entire organizations also.
History
Journalism in antiquity
While
publications reporting news to the general public in a standardized
fashion only began to appear in the 17th century and later, governments
as early as Han dynasty China made use of regularly published news bulletins. Similar publications were established in the Republic of Venice in the 16th century.
These bulletins, however, were intended only for government officials,
and thus were not journalistic news publications in the modern sense of
the term.
Early modern newspapers
As mass-printing technologies like the printing press
spread, newspapers were established to provide increasingly literate
audiences with news. The first references to privately-owned newspaper
publishers in China date to the late Ming dynasty in 1582. Johann Carolus's Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien, published in 1605 in Strassburg, is often recognized as the first newspaper in Europe. The first successful English daily, the Daily Courant, was published from 1702 to 1735. While journalistic enterprises were started as private ventures in some regions, such as The Holy Roman Empire and the British Empire, other countries such as France and Prussia kept tighter control of the press, treating it primarily as an outlet for government propaganda and subjecting it to uniform censorship. Other governments, such as the Russian Empire, were even more distrusting of journalistic press and effectively banned journalistic publications until the mid-19th century.
As newspaper publication became a more and more established practice,
publishers would increase publication to a weekly or daily rate.
Newspapers were more heavily concentrated in cities that were centers of
trade, such as Amsterdam, London, and Berlin. The first newspapers in Latin America would be established in the mid-to-late 19th century.
News media and the revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries
Newspapers played a significant role in mobilizing popular support in favor of the liberal revolutions of the late 18th and 19th centuries. In the American Colonies,
newspapers motivated people to revolt against British rule by
publishing grievances against the British crown and republishing
pamphlets by revolutionaries such as Thomas Paine, while loyalist publications motivated support against the American Revolution. News publications in the United States would remain proudly and publicly partisan throughout the 19th century. In France, political newspapers sprang up during the French Revolution, with L'Ami du peuple, edited by Jean-Paul Marat, playing a particularly famous role in arguing for the rights of the revolutionary lower classes. Napoleon
would reintroduce strict censorship laws in 1800, but after his reign
print publications would flourish and play an important role in
political culture. As part of the Revolutions of 1848, radical liberal publications such as the Rheinische Zeitung, Pesti Hírlap, and Morgenbladet would motivate people toward deposing the aristocratic governments of Central Europe. Other liberal publications played a more moderate role: The Russian Bulletin praised Alexander II of Russia's
liberal reforms in the late 19th century, and supported increased
political and economic freedoms for peasants as well as the
establishment of a parliamentary system in Russia. Farther to the left, socialist and communist newspapers had wide followings in France, Russia and Germany despite being outlawed by the government.
Early 20th century
China
Journalism in China before 1910 primarily served the international
community. The overthrow of the old imperial regime in 1911 produced a
surge in Chinese nationalism, an end to censorship, and a demand for
professional, nation-wide journalism.
All the major cities launched such efforts. By the late 1920s,
however, there was a much greater emphasis on advertising and expanding
circulation, and much less interest in the sort of advocacy journalism
that had inspired the revolutionaries.
France
The Parisian newspapers were largely stagnant after the war;
circulation inched up to 6 million a day from 5 million in 1910. The
major postwar success story was Paris Soir;
which lacked any political agenda and was dedicated to providing a mix
of sensational reporting to aid circulation, and serious articles to
build prestige. By 1939 its circulation was over 1.7 million, double
that of its nearest rival the tabloid Le Petit Parisien. In addition to its daily paper Paris Soir sponsored a highly successful women's magazine Marie-Claire. Another magazine Match was modeled after the photojournalism of the American magazine Life.
Great Britain
By 1900 popular journalism in Britain aimed at the largest possible
audience, including the working class, had proven a success and made its
profits through advertising. Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe
(1865–1922), "More than anyone... shaped the modern press.
Developments he introduced or harnessed remain central: broad contents,
exploitation of advertising revenue to subsidize prices, aggressive
marketing, subordinate regional markets, independence from party
control. His Daily Mail held the world record for daily circulation until his death. Prime Minister Lord Salisbury quipped it was "written by office boys for office boys".
India
The first newspaper of India was published on January 29, 1780 known as ‘Hicky's Gazette’ or formally registered as ‘The Bengal Gazette’.
This first effort at journalism enjoyed only a short stint yet it was a
momentous development, as it gave birth to modern journalism in India.
Following Hicky's efforts which had to be shut down just within
one-and-a-half year of circulation, several English newspapers started
publication in the aftermath. Most of them enjoyed a circulation figure
of about 400 and were weeklies giving personal news items and classified
advertisements about a variety of products. Later on, in the 1800s,
English newspapers were started by Indian publishers with
English-speaking Indians as the target audience. During that era vast
differences in language was a major problem in facilitating a smooth
communication among the people of the country. This is because they
hardly knew the languages prevalent in other parts of this vast land.
However, English came as the 'linguafranca' for everyone from
across the country. Notable among this breed is the one named ‘Bengal
Gazette’ started by Gangadhar Bhattacharyya in 1816.
United States
The late 19th and early 20th century in the United States saw the advent of media empires controlled by the likes of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. Realizing that they could expand their audience by abandoning politically polarized content, thus making more money off of advertising, American newspapers began to abandon their partisan politics in favor of less political reporting starting around 1900.
Newspapers of this era embraced sensationalized reporting and larger
headline typefaces and layouts, a style that would become dubbed "yellow journalism".
Newspaper publishing became much more heavily professionalized in this
era, and issues of writing quality and workroom discipline saw vast
improvement. This era saw the establishment of freedom of the press as a legal norm, as President Theodore Roosevelt tried and failed to sue newspapers for reporting corruption in his handling of the purchase of the Panama Canal.
Still, critics note that government's ability to suppress journalistic
speech is heavily limited, the concentration of newspaper (and general
media) ownership in the hands of a small number of private business
owners leads to other biases in reporting and media self-censorship that
benefits the interests of corporations and the government.
African-American Press
The
rampant discrimination and segregation against African-Americans led to
the founding their own daily and weekly newspapers, especially in large
cities. While the first Black newspapers in America were established in the early 19th century,
in the 20th century these newspapers truly flourished in major cities,
with publishers playing a major role in politics and business affairs.
Representative leaders included Robert Sengstacke Abbott ( 1870-1940), publisher of the Chicago Defender; John Mitchell, Jr. (1863–1929), editor of the Richmond Planet and president of the National Afro-American Press Association; Anthony Overton (1865–1946), publisher of the Chicago Bee, and Robert Lee Vann (1879–1940), the publisher and editor of the Pittsburgh Courier.
Writing for experts or for ordinary citizens?
Walter Lippmann in 1914
In the 1920s in the United States, as newspapers dropped their
blatant partisanship in search of new subscribers, political analyst Walter Lippmann and philosopher John Dewey debated the role of journalism in a democracy.
Their differing philosophies still characterize an ongoing debate about
the role of journalism in society. Lippmann's views prevailed for
decades, helping to bolster the Progressives' confidence in
decision-making by experts, with the general public standing by.
Lippmann argued that high-powered journalism was wasted on ordinary
citizens, but was of genuine value to an elite class of administrators
and experts.
Dewey, on the other hand, believed not only that the public was
capable of understanding the issues created or responded to by the
elite, but also that it was in the public forum that decisions should be
made after discussion and debate. When issues were thoroughly vetted,
then the best ideas would bubble to the surface. The danger of
demagoguery and false news did not trouble Dewey. His faith in popular
democracy has been implemented in various degrees, and is now known as "community journalism". The 1920s debate has been endlessly repeated across the globe, as journalists wrestle with their roles.
Radio
Radio broadcasting
increased in popularity starting in the 1920s, becoming widespread in
the 1930s. While most radio programming was oriented toward music,
sports, and entertainment, radio also broadcast speeches and occasional
news programming. Radio reached the peak of its importance during World War II, as radio and newsreels were the two main sources of up-to-date information on the ongoing war. In the Soviet Union,
radio would be heavily utilized by the state to broadcast political
speeches by leadership. These broadcasts would very rarely have any
additional editorial content or analysis, setting them apart from modern
news reporting. Radio would however soon be eclipsed by broadcast television starting in the 1950s.
Television
Starting in the 1940s, United States
broadcast television channels would air 10-to-15-minute segments of
news programming one or two times per evening. The era of live-TV news
coverage would begin in the 1960s with the assassination of John F. Kennedy,
broadcast and reported to live on a variety of nationally syndicated
television channels. During the 60s and 70s, television channels would
begin adding regular morning or midday news shows. Starting in 1980 with
the establishment of CNN, news channels began providing 24-hour news coverage, a format which persists through today.
Digital age
The
role and status of journalism, as well as mass media, has undergone
changes over the last two decades, together with the advancement of
digital technology and publication of news on the Internet. This has created a shift in the consumption of print media channels, as people increasingly consume news through e-readers, smartphones,
and other electronic devices. News organizations are challenged to
fully monetize their digital wing, as well as improvise on the context
in which they publish in print. Newspapers have seen print revenues sink
at a faster pace than the rate of growth for digital revenues.
Notably, in the American media landscape, newsrooms
have reduced their staff and coverage as traditional media channels,
such as television, grappling with declining audiences. For example,
between 2007 and 2012, CNN edited its story packages into nearly half of their original time length.
The compactness in coverage has been linked to broad audience attrition. According to the Pew Research Center, the circulation for U.S. newspapers has fallen sharply in the 21st century. The digital era also introduced journalism that ordinary citizens play a greater role in the process, with the rise of citizen journalism
being possible through the Internet. Using video camera-equipped
smartphones, active citizens are now enabled to record footage of news
events and upload them onto channels like YouTube (which is often discovered and used by mainstream news media outlets). News from a variety of online sources, like blogs
and other social media, results in a wider choice of official and
unofficial sources, rather than only traditional media organizations.
Journalists interviewing a cosplayer
Professional and ethical standards
News photographers and reporters waiting behind a police line in New York City, in May 1994
While various existing codes have some differences, most share common elements including the principles of – truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity,
impartiality, fairness and public accountability – as these apply to
the acquisition of newsworthy information and its subsequent
dissemination to the public.
Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel propose several guidelines for journalists in their book The Elements of Journalism.
Their view is that journalism's first loyalty is to the citizenry, and
that journalists are thus obliged to tell the truth and must serve as an
independent monitor of powerful individuals and institutions within
society. In this view, the essence of journalism is to provide citizens
with reliable information through the discipline of verification.
Some journalistic Codes of Ethics, notably the European ones, also include a concern with discriminatory references in news based on race, religion, sexual orientation, and physical or mental disabilities. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe approved in 1993 Resolution 1003 on the Ethics of Journalism which recommends journalists to respect the presumption of innocence, in particular in cases that are still sub judice.
In the UK, all newspapers are bound by the Code of Practice of the Independent Press Standards Organisation.This
includes points like respecting people's privacy and ensuring accuracy.
However, the Media Standards Trust has criticized the PCC, claiming it
needs to be radically changed to secure the public trust of newspapers.
This is in stark contrast to the media climate prior to the 20th
century, where the media market was dominated by smaller newspapers and
pamphleteers who usually had an overt and often radical agenda, with no
presumption of balance or objectivity.
Because of the pressure on journalists to report news promptly
and before their competitors, factual errors occur more frequently than
in writing produced and edited under less time pressure. Thus a typical
issue of a major daily newspaper may contain several corrections of
articles published the previous day. Perhaps the most famous
journalistic mistake caused by time pressure was the Dewey Defeats Truman edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune, based on early election returns that failed to anticipate the actual result of the 1948 US presidential election.
Failing to uphold standards
Such a code of conduct
can, in the real world, be difficult to uphold consistently. Reporting
and editing do not occur in a vacuum but always reflect the political
context in which journalists, no less than other citizens, operate.
A news organization's budget inevitably reflects decision-making
about what news to cover, for what audience, and in what depth. When
budgets are cut, editors may sacrifice reporters in distant news
bureaus, reduce the number of staff assigned to low-income areas, or
wipe entire communities from the publication's zone of interest.
Publishers, owners and other corporate executives, especially
advertising sales executives, could try to use their powers over
journalists to influence how news is reported and published. For this
reason, journalists traditionally relied on top management to create and
maintain a "firewall" between the news and other departments in a news
organization to prevent undue influence on the news department.
Codes of Ethics
There are over 242 codes of ethics in journalism that vary across various regions of the world.
The codes of ethics are created through an interaction of different
groups of people such as the public and journalists themselves. Most of
the codes of ethics serve as a representation of the economic and
political beliefs of the society where the code was written.
Despite the fact that there are a variety of codes of ethics, some of
the core elements present in all codes are: remaining objective,
providing the truth, and being honest.
Journalism does not have a universal code of conduct; individuals are not legally obliged to follow a certain set of rules like a doctor or a lawyer does.
There have been discussions for creating a universal code of conduct in
journalism. One suggestion centers on having three claims for credibility, justifiable consequence, and the claim of humanity.
Within the claim of credibility, journalists are expected to provide
the public with reliable and trustworthy information, and allowing the
public to question the nature of the information and its acquisition.
The second claim of justifiable consequences centers on weighing the
benefits and detriments of a potentially harmful story and acting
accordingly. An example of justifiable consequence is exposing a
professional with dubious practices; on the other hand, acting within
justifiable consequence means writing compassionately about a family in
mourning. The third claim is the claim of humanity which states that
journalists are writing for a global population and therefore must serve
everyone globally in their work, avoiding smaller loyalties to country,
city, etc.
Legal status
Journalists at a press conference
Number of journalists reported killed between 2002 and 2013
Governments have widely varying policies and practices towards
journalists, which control what they can research and write, and what
press organizations can publish. Some governments guarantee the freedom
of the press; while other nations severely restrict what journalists can
research or publish.
Journalists in many nations have some privileges that members of
the general public do not, including better access to public events,
crime scenes and press conferences, and to extended interviews with
public officials, celebrities and others in the public eye.
Journalists who elect to cover conflicts, whether wars between nations or insurgencies
within nations, often give up any expectation of protection by
government, if not giving up their rights to protection from the
government. Journalists who are captured or detained during a conflict
are expected to be treated as civilians and to be released to their
national government. Many governments around the world target
journalists for intimidation, harassment, and violence because of the
nature of their work.
Right to protect confidentiality of sources
Journalists' interaction with sources sometimes involves confidentiality, an extension of freedom of the press giving journalists a legal protection to keep the identity of a confidential informant
private even when demanded by police or prosecutors; withholding their
sources can land journalists in contempt of court, or in jail.
In the United States, there is no right to protect sources in a federal
court. However, federal courts will refuse to force journalists to
reveal their sources, unless the information the court seeks is highly
relevant to the case and there's no other way to get it. State courts
provide varying degrees of such protection. Journalists who refuse to
testify even when ordered to can be found in contempt of court
and fined or jailed. On the journalistic side of keeping sources
confidential, there is also a risk to the journalist's credibility
because there can be no actual confirmation of whether the information
is valid. As such it is highly discouraged for journalists to have
confidential sources.
