As journalist, it is our drive to cover certain stories. We all have our best stories that we like to cover most and the stories that tend to get the audiences attention.
During the presentation, I thought it was really interesting of how we come to cover certain stories. For example, The Ease, are the stories that we see, the Economics are the stories we cover that people want to read, and the Elitism are the stories what educated people care about. We write and report news stories according to how these three principles applies to each journalist. I know a lot of journalist who are assigned to a specific story he or she may not want, but have to go ahead and report the story in order to make their news director happy. A lot of journalist argue in the sense of, "are we reporting for us or the people." Do we write the stories that the audience want to know or the stories the audience should know? I think as journalist we are free to write whatever we want, and the most important kind of story is reporting the truth, so the people can have a voice and know the things that are going on in society.
Some journalist tend to be pressured to hype a story because the news is subjective and some stories may not be as important as others, so the journalist will juice up the story to interest viewers.
In the presentation it was spoken that sensationalism coverage isn't proportional journalism, which is true I don't think by putting emotion into the story should be a value of what good journalism is. It seems like the journalist who add an emotional tied for the readers is not credible. They want an emotional story, not an emotional journalists.
The best support for a strong reliable story, is a story that has been highly researched. Research helps journalists make judgments, it doesn't replace their judgement according to market research.
In journalism, sensationalism is a strong mechanism that attracts audiences attention like the example of Michael Jackson's Death it was the top story at every news station and paper. Of whether he committed suicide or if he murdered, which captured audiences and fans to know the truth behind Jackson's death.
Reality-TV entertainment are taking the role of journalist to be more credible, which is an outrage because reality TV stars do not have any kind of journalism background or ethics pertaining to the field, but what they can do is capture an audiences attention.
We all know the famous journalist Walter Cronkite who is the man to be trusted and I thought it was ridiculous that people didn't trust him and thought he wasn't reliable from him tearing up when he announced the death of JFK. I watched the video and you can't really tell his eyes were watering, he just took off his glasses and paused then proceeded to announce the JFK assassination. If you call that emotional what would you call some of the reporters today, cry babies? The most emotional reporter in my opinion is Anderson Cooper, especially when he gets involved in natural disasters like Katrina, or Haiti earth quake victims where he acts like he is a raging citizens protesting for rights and for people to help these victims.
It seems like original reporting is just getting more expensive and time consuming. A lot of news are leaning towards soft news or featured news stories that just captures ratings and news that are not as significant as something that really affects the people. For example Anna Nicole Smith death was in the news and replaced other hard core news because it sells. Hopefully the journalist of today will take a stand on reporting news that the people want and need to know, so they can make self governing decisions on the matter and in society.
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