Week 7: Truth and Objectivity: Post-Modern Casualties or Victims of PR Piracy?

The topic in brief

"Examining truth in journalism is an exercise in what social scientists call boundary work rhetoric" (Winch 1997, p. 3 cited in Tickle 2001, p. 89).

Just how are parameters set to differentiate journalists from other media practitioners? Why is it important to do so? Such questions should be asked in understanding the effects of post-modernism and public relations (PR) on journalism. Death of true journalism seems imminent as news get mixed with entertainment and arise out of favours. The defence for infotainment is that the audience demands for it. While meeting the audience's wants boost ratings, meeting the audience's needs ensures quality in journalism. In order to do so, the news-gathering process should comprise of three levels of reporting -- reactive, analytic, and reflective (Bowman & McIlwaine 2001). This is probably a solution to the problem of "churnalism" whereby journalists feed off newswire agencies and not challenging press releases for their news value, putting in little effort to check the credibility of the stories they intended to publish (Davies 2008). Journalists are making it easier for PR practitioners and marketers to gain control of news media and turn them into promotional platforms. Where will that put news then?

In this week's seminar by Joachim, Aashajeet Kaur, and Se Young
With regards to the three levels of reporting and investigative journalism, Joachim highlighted the importance of enquiry. Enquiry allows journalist to report on a story logically despite the emotional quality of the story. A possibility for the lack of enquiry in journalistic process nowadays can be attributed to the shortage of time. Enquiry is time-consuming thus unfavourable for journalists rushing to beat the others in updating the public first.

Aashajeet Kaur then used the hierarchy of credibility by Becker (1967) to explain the shift in reliance of sources for journalists -- wire agencies are seen to have the highest availability of information. This has brought many implications on journalism itelf. Among those include the falsehood of a story's news value. It brings unnecessary pressure on journalists in reporting on the story despite its insignificance.

Se Young focused on the perversion of the notion of truth-telling as a result of lack of enquiry and credibility checking of news stories taken from wire and PR agencies. The lack of emphasis on truth-telling in journalism can possibly lead to the diminishing of  news. News are supposed to reflect social reality and by failing to report truthfully, the reality becomes misrepresented. Altogether, a new preferred reality is created. One which indulges in entertainment and things people love to hate like violence.

From what I have gathered from their presentations, I realise the burden of journalists has increased in this twentieth century. It used to be about safeguarding oneself against sub-judice and defamation. Now, journalists have become more restricted to making employers happy and delivering what audiences want thus downplaying the real reason journalists become who they are. What was once a superhero outfit has turned into a puppet handled by strings.

Conclusion
This world exists in duality. In order to have truth and objectivity, deception and subjectivity need to co-exist. It is only practical to try and curb the lies and this is only possible in the journalism industry if journalists make a conscious effort to remain true and objective.