Journalists Facing Extinction

I've found an interesting article about how the internet has affected journalism and something hit me. At first I thought it was a last ditch attempt to glue in some relevancy before they're made extinct. It does raise some thoughts.

The article rightly points out that the gatekeepers have crumbled, allowing anyone with an internet connection to tell a story, also that the accuracy of those stories are varied but also that traditional journalists are still required to "interpret what you think you see, into the larger context".

When you get your news updates from many sources, most of them unofficial, just people who have heard or seen something it must be very difficult for traditional dead tree journalists to come up with a fresh story, as their "exclusive" will often be days old news online before it hits the newsagents. They also have to factor in the religious, political or financial bias of their employer to twist the story to their own agenda.

People online have their own views and in many cases their own agenda that they either intentionally or unintentionally let seep through their reporting, but this is where some common sense, aggregating and reputation come in to help filter what's actually happening, to what people think (or want others to think) is happening.

Reputation is king

Journalists are an important link in the chain in putting context and broader understanding to seemingly unconnected events however the journalists reputation is everything. Journalists who work for well known agenda mouthpieces like Fox News, do not deserve the title "journalist". When their employers are hell bent on twisting anything into furthering their own agenda regardless of the facts, where there is not even an attempt of accuracy, they are worthless. They are part of the problem.

Journalists, like everyone else have to put food on the table, pay the mortgage and car payments etc. They need to look at who they choose to prostitute their services to, and what is required of them to do it. If that employer expects you to follow an agenda, it's your own reputation that's affected. Actors often turn down movies they sense are going to turn out shit, because they don't want their reputations sullied by the association.

Silence assumes consent

Perhaps the problem is that most of the news industry employers fit this bill, so getting paid work in an honest environment is next to impossible. If that's the case, then perhaps it's time for journalists to rise up to save their own industry, and demand to be able to report facts as accurately as they can before the label "journalist" loses all credibility.

People are often accused of unfairly labelling all journalists and politicians as scumbags. The problem is that many of them are, and the handful who are not don't speak out about it in their chosen profession. They refuse to tackle the issue, to try and do some good and get it addressed for the better. Of course this is about keeping their job, anyone who rocks the apple cart is marked as a troublemaker and soon finds themselves ignored at work, then dismissed under some dubious grounds followed by being marked as a pariah in their industry meaning that no other company will employ them.

The alternative is that they stay slient, knowing the rancid nature of their industry, and colluding to keep that train on the tracks. They are part of the problem, all the while their readers increasingly see the problem and the solution; avoid traditional journalists, they can't be trusted.

Bloggers aren't real journalists

A common refrain from those on the paid journalism gravy train is that bloggers don't give as much insight, because they're not trained or that their identity is hidden, so you can't see an agenda if it's there. Anyone notice when journalists started calling themselves "journalists" instead of "reporters"?

A reporter "reports" the news as they see it, a journalist maintains a "journal" which is their opinions on the news events. That journal may take the form of a live TV interview with a host in the studio, or a blog or an audio report. The point is that it's an opinion piece, formed by the bias of the individual and the bias of their employer. A blog is also an online journal, by definition bloggers are also journalists, in that they keep a journal of opinion pieces

Bloggers are you, me, and anyone who wants to create and maintain a blog about things they care enough about to spend time writing about. Very few of us are full time paid bloggers, most of us write blog posts in our spare time when an idea comes to us. Some of uis are frequent bloggers, some are not so frequent. Some of us are balanced, some are not. Bloggers for the most part are real people with real points of view. By that I mean we're not writing from a companies PR handbook.

The problem many mainstream journalists have a problem with bloggers is that many bloggers are proving to be just as good if not better than the paid journalists in covering issues, they are more specialised in their subject matter for a start. They also don't have the PR filter reputation hanging around every sentence. When more and more of us are getting our news from bloggers who are actually at the heart of a story because it's happening outside their windows, the "expertise" of the paid journalist become an additional source of information, not the main one.

In short their audience is evaporating not because they don't care, but because they do care. They care to try and get the real story and the mainstream news outlets increasingly don't deliver. Mainstream journalists are making themselves extinct by colluding in the rancid nature of spin and deception, by publishing corporate advertising press releases as news stories, unattributed studies paid by lobby groups without checking facts, and politicians columns without challenging the avalanche of intentional inaccuracies it contains.

Wikileaks shone a light on just how bad the mainstream news outlets are at keeping the people informed, and how the people react when they find they're being deceived.

Selling the news

Against this backdrop the news industry are desperate to find models that involve people paying to consume the news. Why should people pay to receive old news, filtered by an agenda and written by journalists who wouldn't know fairness and accuracy if it bit them on the ass? This, Rupert Murdoch thinks he has the solution in paywalls, and plenty of journalists hope it'll pay off.

Dishonest actors

One of the many things revealed in the HBGary story was that parts of the US government had a keen interest in astrotufing software, allowing their people to pretend to be 100's of unconnected individuals, all with fake backgrounds who would astroturf their propaganda on the internet. This is standard operating procedure for large corporations, special interest groups and lobbyists.

The problem here is that not everything is as it seems. If you have 100 seemingly unconnected people all claiming X is happening, and you're unaware that all of those "people" are actually one person in an office paid to pretend to be 100 people it influences the news.

How do you tell the honest actors from dishonest ones? Reputation. Just like journalists, if you choose to sell out, eventually your bias will be exposed, casting an irrevocable shadow over everything else you do.

If my blog consists of lots of angry accusatory posts, making all sorts of ridiculous claims it affects how I am seen, and how seriously people take any points I make. That can be "preaching to the converted" as some bloggers do, where they don't let facts or reality get in the way of a good bashing, knowing they have a loyal audience of nutters who think the same as them. That's not to say that some of what I say may not have a grain of truth to it, just that it won't even be considered by "normal" people as a possibility because of the reputation I've built with my other posts.

On the other hand, if my blog is rational, and tries to be balanced, fair and objective, it can often get a much wider reach. It will make people think and possibly question the claims I make in other places, looking for their own confirmation or even denial. If I am correct in my assessments consistently, it affects my reputation, and therefore my readership grows as people recommend my work to their friends and family.

At the risk of repeating myself, reputation is king. This applies just as much to journalists as to bloggers and commentators. Having a piece of paper saying you passed some training course does not boost your reputation, nor does the employer who pays your wages. Your work creates your reputation; good or bad.