In the Public Interest: Public vs private

Has anyone tired of seeing news reports being distorted into entertainments? Has anyone realized that news reports concerning with human interest had suffered because of such reason? However, interesting enough, entertainments and journalism had went hand in hand for a long time. Thus, sensationalism in journalism was created as an important ingredient in news reports to stimulate public interest. As a result, events are seen as newsworthy when they are emotionally compelling and had intruded one’s privacy.

The duty of a journalist is to inform public on the events that are happening around them. However, problems will arise when the right of society to be informed had went against the right of individuals to privacy. Moreover, to make such problems more complicated, there is actually no clear-cut distinction between what is consider right and wrong when it comes to the issue of privacy and public interest. As a result, there are still possibilities of conflicts to rise when a journalist cover a story that touches on such areas. Therefore, in my opinion, a journalist should always question himself if he had intruded on a person’s personal life when writing or reporting on a story. For example, should a journalist approach grieving parents and conduct an interview with them about their murdered son? I think it is better not to. We had understood that news should be unusual and interesting, however, it is impossible for journalists to find an educational aspect to report every single story in the world of reality. Hence, I feel that no matter how interesting a news story can be, there must still have a dividing line between the type of news that the public has the right to know, and those for the individuals to keep private. For example, if a celebrity has some negative behaviour at his or her home, the media have no rights to report on it, as there is no possible negative effect on the celebrity’s public role. Such situation can be considered as invading a person’s privacy.

I understand that there is a need for companies to maintain their readerships and businesses. However, in recent years it seems that the drive for profits has completely overshadowed the public interest in reliable and informative news. As a whole and in my opinion, there should be a limit of sensitivity where it is important for the concern of individuals to be balanced with a journalist’s responsibility to inform the society as a whole. It is definitely not easy to define or maintain such balance, but being as a journalist, one has the responsibility to try.

Dependencies of Journalists have on Public Relations Practitioners

Both PR practitioners and media journalists depend on each other to complete their respective jobs and responsibilities. Journalists rely on PR practitioners for information and materials for their news reports, while PR practitioners can influence the news agenda that were given to the journalists. Hence, there must be mutual trust between both professions so as to produced reliable pieces of news for the public, which are favourable to the PR organizations as well.

Much portions of the information in the news reports that were published on newspapers and even broadcasted on Television were provided by the PR organizations and specialists, rather than solely discovered by the media journalists. Most journalists depend on the news information provided by the PR practitioners as supporting sources for their ‘raw materials’ and news drafts. These include the news articles, feature stories, bulletins, media releases and announcements. The reason is PR practitioners speak on behalf of the organizations/clients that they work for, and thus, they are the ones who are regarded as the gatekeepers of news information, and journalists need quotes and information from these clients of the PR practitioners. In addition, these information can be copied straight from the media releases given by the PR practitioners, and had definitely saved much of the journalists’ time and efforts on finding news sources to publish their news stories. In my opinion, I believe that such practices may not vary much for both large and small publishing firms, as large publishing firms need more news stories to report on, while small publishing firms may have fewer journalists or reporters to write for stories.

Furthermore, I too feel that when news information was provided for the journalists, this can reduce the possibilities of negative reports on the organizations that the PR practitioners are working for. The reason is journalists may be less likely to go look for their own news sources, which may bring negative publicity to the clients of the PR practitioners. Therefore, being as the primary writing source for journalists on their stories, PR practitioners can influence the contents of a story and how it was published. As a whole, I feel that both media journalists and PR practitioners have an interrelationship with each other, whereby journalists should recognize that PR practitioners are the gatekeepers of news information, and PR practitioners can help journalists accomplish their tasks by helping them with facts and figures checks, so that the journalists have the story right.

Truth & Objectivity

Journalists are human beings. They do have biases and different personal values that may bring into their professions unconsciously. Hence, after all the vigorous debates and callings on journalists should be objective when reporting news, maybe it is time to change this traditional journalism mindset to something more achievable? I would like to point out that being objective is still a goal; however, we can use other pillars of good journalism as replacement. They are accuracy, fairness, thoroughness and transparency. I feel that these four pillars are too, useful in the approaches to quality journalism, easier to achieve when writing news reports, and definitely bring journalists to a better platform in their professions in a long run.

Accuracy is definitely the easiest to achieve among the four, whereby journalists should get their facts straight and report information that is beyond their current knowledge. Next is fairness, which means listening to different viewpoints, and incorporating them into journalism. Fairness is also about allowing publics to feedback and willing to listen to those who disagree. However, I feel that this may be easier to follow for online than in a print publication, much less a broadcast. Further on, is thoroughness that means to gather readers for their inputs on a news story. The last pillar is transparency, whereby it means the ways journalists present a news story. They should link their stories with supportive sources and materials in the most possible ways, and inform publics with close-to-the-ground facts and data.

In my opinion, transparency can be the new face of objectivity and is now fulfilling some of objectivity’s old role in the ecology of journalism knowledge. The reason is transparency provides publics with information by which they can undo some of the unintended effects of the ever-present biases that they had read before from other sources. Moreover, transparency also means to back a specific assertion (objectivity) up by letting publics and readers to look at different sources, disagreements, and the feedbacks that are initially bracketed out of the report. On the other hand, the problem with objectivity is that we could not really define ‘objectivity’ after all! It only tries to show the publics/readers what the incident of stories look like from no particular point of view, just like looking something in the dark! Another way to convey my point on this is even a journalist reports on a news story with his defined ‘objectivity’ without imparting transparency, is just an exaggerated self-opinioned work piece! Why should we trust what one person — even if is with good intentions — accept is true when there are many other alternatives of evidence, ideas, and arguments provided by other people?

Hence, transparency brings us to reliability the way objectivity used to. Nevertheless, objectivity is still considered as an unattainable goal — but yet, had served as an important role in the past on how we came to trust information, and in the current economics of newspapers in the modern world.

Citizen Journalism and Traditional Journalism

Our future is online, and so does the profession of journalism.

With the revolution of technologies in our modern world, the Internet enables everyone to become a publisher and alternative sources are becoming the main choices of news provider. With the human desire and curiosity on dramatic and ecological fronts, the current journalists from both the traditional media and new media are faced with increasing pressure and demands for a NEW STORY, instead of news story. Furthermore, the new media/social media allows readers to post their comments on an online published news story, and yes, I admit that reading these comments posted for the online news pieces tend to be more interesting than those that were written on the letters to editor column on a hardcopy newspaper. However, I must say that this is when the read beomes bias, in which readers are obsessed with entertainment, and the 'boring-hardcopy' nature of the traditional journalism is losing its readership to these online interactive social media and personal blogs. The main reason is every writer has the freedom to express their opinions at an instant speed on these social media, such as Twitter and Blogspot, and the comment threats had became more interestng and entertaining when more readers were involved. On the other hand, it takes a day for a newspaper publication to publish the opinion pieces wrote in by the public, and due to the limited publishing spaces, not all commented pieces are published.

Advanced technologies is a good thing however, in my opinion, I feel that it brings more problems than good to us, especially in the field of journalism. The reason is although online citizen journalism is more interactive, engaged to readers and the comments are much more personal, but I feel these personal comments are inadequate for citizen to have an objective understanding for a full picture of the news story. Traditional journalism checks on clarity of content, good language usage, conducts interview in a proper procedures and produces a detailed narration of a news story. Hence, when I flip through a hardcopy newspaper, I feel more satisfactory to see well-written colums of features and news stories with photographs. On the other hand, although the comments made by citizen journalism of the social media is more simplified, lesser words to read especially for young readers, who prefer convenient short sentences and have less patience to read a full story, and readers can participate and contribute their comments, its 'just people sharing their trivia" without any back-checking of facts after all! Thus, personally, I will choose to go for quality instead of speed. Suffice to say, the frameworks of traditional journalism is so different from online citizen journalism, preceding paragraph were made possible with traditional journalism, and I must say, without traditional journalism, we will not be able to see the outlines of the news stories, let alone the details. Thus, although traditional journalism guides readers through a boring linear narrative rather than a more conversational approach, people should take this as the grace of professional journalism and accept this important journalism function.

Internet has indeed lower the standards and good quality of a good professional journalism. If we continue to produce news story, or rather a NEW STORY based on individual decision and collective policies on it, we will dramatically accelerate the downfall of good traditional journalism. After writing this blog, I am much aware of what citizen journalism is all about and will be greatful for efforts from traditional journalism when I flip through a newspaper.

Globalization and Localization

There are many debates on media globalization as its cultural implications had taken on huge changes in terms of communication and technologies. Also, globalization allows diversity in information exchanges and creates major social and cultural changes in societies. Thus, with the revolution of technology such as the Internet, global journalism practices had changed in both information production and in information consumption.

It is definitely an advantage for global journalists that they now have access to so much more different media sources, and are exposed to greater varieties of opinions and world views on the current affairs than before. However, in my opinion, I think that global journalism were being practiced in developed countries than in developing countries, and the reasons are the political power, media ownerships and the cultures of recipients. In the current world, countries which have more conservative and traditional societies either resisted or accepted the process of globalization. However, I still feel that traditional ways of ruling a society cannot be ignored in the face of globalization, globalization cannot be isolated from localization, and they should work together dialectically. The main reason is both processes are seen as the integrated parts on the shift towards global reality that characterized our world today.

This is especially important for country such as Singapore, whereby it is a multi-racial society that consists people from international countries of all over the world. Therefore, the interplay of the globalization and localization is necessary to us, as we do need information from the rest of the world in order to help us to maintain and substanciate the religious and racial harmony in Singapore.

Who will pay for journalism?

The journalism world is still arguing between to-charge-or-not-to-charge for both their online and off-line news content. Advertisers have always been the ones to cover for the production costs of news publications. Can newspaper publications which had spent years of giving away their news content for free starts charging for it now? In my opinion seeing this issue from a Singaporean perspective, this is not going to work base on the very typical fact that the word 'FREE' is Singaporeans' favourite 4-lettered F-word! Also, currently we have free newspaper for the public at the SMRT stations (Singapore Mass Rapid Transit), which are 'Today' and 'MyPaper'. Besides, they can even get tons of related news online for free on the Internet as well. Therefore, I do not think so one will want to pay for news/information which they have been getting for free all these while.

Other questions for us to think about will be: Are there enough people whom do regard these news to be of value that they would pay for? Even if so, for how long and how much will these people willing to pay for their newspapers? I think the main concern with regards to the above questions is young generations are growing up with the huge influences of digital technologies. This gradually leads them to not having the concept of newspapers as a source of information since these information can be retrieve from the Internet for free. The explosion of cyberspace of the Internet will very likely to cause the omission for both off-line and online advertising prices, therefore, leads to the decline demands for traditional journalism. Hence, it does not matter if the news content should be free but what matters is will people pay for it. Looking this issue from the economic perspective, the Internet will continue to pull audience and advertisers away from traditional news media outlets, even Television and Radio industries as well. The instant connectivity nature of the Internet is putting increasing financial and social pressure on the processes of news productions of the traditional newspaper publications. As a result, besides just reporting on papers, more and more reporters or journalists working at the newspaper publications will have to do double, or even triple amount of duties. They too, need to do photographing, online bloggings and twitter updates every day on the social networking sites as well.

As a whole, I think in the current advertising-based system, it makes survival very difficult for print publications that solely depend from sales alone. Also, even if such publications survive, they will not be receiving enough media coverages and attentions from the public. The main reason is advertisings adverts do attract public's attention at most of the time! For example, the food and breverages promotion advertisements from NTUC (National Trades Union Congress), and mobile phones advertisments from Singtel. I feel that advertising, just like media ownership, acts as a news filter and affects the types of news aditorials to be publish on the newspapers since the threat of withdrawal of advertisings do affect editorial content. Thus, I feel advertisers should pay for journalism more than the consumers. Also, with regards to consumers should pay for online news content, newspaper industries should have started the policy way much earlier rather than now.

Technology and Journalism

Most of us know that the print media industries are facing increasing competitions and challenges ever since with the revolution of technology, and journalists realized the nature of their profession had changed with the existing of World Wide Web. As a result, we are witnessing a huge progression of the information technology revolution in our contemporary society today, as there are mass overload of media technologies available to the public. Hence, everyone can be a writer and contribute their social opinions in the global debates on the online public sphere of the Internet. (Just like right now I am sitting in front of my laptop and is blogging on such topic on blogspot.com!) Furthermore, with the introduction of Web2.0, people now can educate themselves to international news around the world that are beyond their local communities, and raise greater awareness to the current affairs in a much faster way.

To the question of how will technology affects traditional journalism? Well, in my opinion, traditional journalism will still survive, but the operations on the profession will be different now, since Internet is creating a global, interconnected and real-time cyberspace for journalism. Blogspot had became a so-called 'mainstream' media, whereby it is maturing greater numbers of online audiences, and is renewing journalism at the same time. Thus, I feel that besides serving for ownselves, blogs also serve for communities who have the similar opinions as well, and every one will be communicating on the virtual space and there will be continuous flow of information. These mean that the job scopes of journalists are no longer just writing on papers, but also to create interactive platforms through the uses of social media, such as Twitter, Blogspot and FaceBook. For example, to research and come up with news videos and radio podcasts for the online audiences. Thus, new media/social networking sites lead to the print media industries are no longer the gatekeeper of information, and people can retrieve different angles of a news from different sources of online websites.

As a whole, I believe innovation is the core reason that drives the revolution of technology, which in turn, creates popular social media on the web and allows more voices to be heard. Of course, makes journalists exposed to different media and different types of storytellings.