The Digital Tattoo sits down with Emmy-award winning journalist, founder of the Global Reporting Centre, and UBC professor Peter Klein to discuss the media’s changing landscape. He covers topics like how stories are being told, for what reasons, by whom, and will be incorporating it all into his course, JRNL 100A: New Media and Society.
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Really interesting to hear Peter Klein’s take on the role of journalists in storytelling. Seems to me that credibility, trust, solid research and (to some extent) impartiality used to be the foundation on which a journalist’s reputation rested. How has (or has) that shifted with the need for speed and competition for attention that must be at play with our current access to tools that give anyone a platform and access to a global audience?
It seems like impartiality and objectivity are kind of out the window these days. It was once something to strive for (even then perhaps more of a fiction than anything else) but most people have now accepted the inherent biases of the media. Social media creates a need for the news to be immediately accessible, and thus creates more room for bias and more room for error. It really is like they say: you can be fast, you can be right, or you can be cheap, but you can only be two.
More people being able to report on the events of the world is good thing. It bridges barriers, forges alliances between unlikely sources, and gives a voice to those who might otherwise not be heard. But it doesn’t replace the need for credible, well researched journalism. It’s another tool that journalists can use; not a replacement or substitute for the work that journalists do.