Today’s Journalism

Miami students in Williams Hall

Above is a audio link featuring a Miami journalism professor’s take on journalism practices today.

After Lara Logan’s Benghazi story was exposed as a lie, the public has good reason to wonder why they should trust journalists. Unfortunately, this has been an issue long before the 60 Minutes scandal. On one survey done by researchers at Gallup in 2012, only 24% of the public rated journalists as honest. This is right below bankers and right above business executives. It’s not just the public that’s worried about the current state of journalism. Journalists

Awards in Williams Hall

themselves have some important things to say about the purpose of journalism, its current shortcomings, and what journalists and the public should do to fix the issue.

Dr. Ed Arnone, a journalism professor at Miami University, explains the fundamentals of why we have a free news media in our society. Arnone says that government agencies need to conduct as much of their business in the open to prevent an abuse of power and prevent harmful situations from happening that the public never hears about.

He says, “The purpose of a journalist is to help to make sure there is a free and open exchange of ideas in our society so that all of us can act as citizens – participating citizens in a democratic community, and if we allow people in power to hide what they’re doing or selectively tell us what they want us to know, it poses all kinds of threats to our freedoms and the kind of country we say we want to live in.”

However, the current issue lies in the fact that journalists today aren’t providing the public with the same quality of information that they were 50 years ago. Dr. Ron Becker, a communication professor at Miami, explains that funding is partially responsible. Journalists don’t have the same financial resources that they did in the 20^th century. As a result, quality has been sacrificed.

Becker says, “The news is increasingly caught up in the for-profit business dynamics of the industry, so there’s this pressure to cut costs and increase ratings, and profitability begins to trump newsworthiness and civil contribution.”

When it comes to trusting journalists, Becker points out that there can be a spiral effect.

“It’s a huge shift from the Watergate scandals. During the Watergate scandals, journalists were heroes,” Becker says,” and the less people trust journalists the more desperate journalists become to get viewers or ratings and they do things that only work to exacerbate the disrespect that people hold.” ‘

Becker points out that once trust is lost, it’s hard to get it back. Arnone echoes the same point.

“All you have is your word,” Arnone says. “If people can’t trust what you’re saying and know that you made every effort to take the predicament or whatever it is seriously…then they have no reason to come to you.”

Concerning the future of journalism, Carrie Ellington, a Miami student who double majors in journalism and professional writing, thinks that the profession of journalism isn’t over quite yet.

“I think that eventually newspapers will be out, but not as soon as people think,” Ellington says. “I don’t see news channels going out though because there are many people who rely on them and watch them on a regular basis.”

Ellington thinks that news sources will simply become digitalized rather than eradicated.

“People always say journalism’s dying, but it’s just changing modes,” Ellington says.

In order for journalism to improve in the coming years, Becker thinks that the public needs to own up to its part and adapt. Becker says that we were used to getting quality journalism for cheap and that we might have to pay more for journalism in order to increase quality.