- Apr 13, 2006
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I've been worried about this for a while and I absolutely see it creeping around up here in Alberta too.
There's been threads on it too: News media trust. We see a strong erosion in the trust in that media. It's happenned at other points in history but we don't need to get into that.
My first thought when I hear "we can't trust the news" is.... "okay....but THEN what?" As citizens in a democracy, we have a bit of an obligation to be informed.
There are avenues whereby misrepresentations in news media websites can be fixed, edited, errors acknowledged etc. There are also organizations that acknowledge and reward good journalism.
Because good journalism is essential to a healthy democracy; nobody can argue with that.
So where are we getting our information from then? Are they reputable? How do they hold themselves accountable for unclear information? MOST important, how distinct is the writing style between the "news" and the "opinion" sections (if there are any). As humans, we are inclined to listen to the people who we agree with the most...but we also know that they are going to have some of their own strong opinions. So how do we accept information from talking head opinion givers? We say we "Watch the news" when really we watch "opinion pieces" and I think a lot of people think those two things are 100% interchangeable.
Maybe there are two questions "how bad has the journalism ACTUALLY gotten" versus "how has our perception of the news changed".
I think it is very, very reasonable to say that there is a much higher level of skepticism in institutions than in the past; I just wonder again, about how much the organization has changed and how does my perception of those things change.
There's been threads on it too: News media trust. We see a strong erosion in the trust in that media. It's happenned at other points in history but we don't need to get into that.
My first thought when I hear "we can't trust the news" is.... "okay....but THEN what?" As citizens in a democracy, we have a bit of an obligation to be informed.
There are avenues whereby misrepresentations in news media websites can be fixed, edited, errors acknowledged etc. There are also organizations that acknowledge and reward good journalism.
Because good journalism is essential to a healthy democracy; nobody can argue with that.
So where are we getting our information from then? Are they reputable? How do they hold themselves accountable for unclear information? MOST important, how distinct is the writing style between the "news" and the "opinion" sections (if there are any). As humans, we are inclined to listen to the people who we agree with the most...but we also know that they are going to have some of their own strong opinions. So how do we accept information from talking head opinion givers? We say we "Watch the news" when really we watch "opinion pieces" and I think a lot of people think those two things are 100% interchangeable.
Maybe there are two questions "how bad has the journalism ACTUALLY gotten" versus "how has our perception of the news changed".
I think it is very, very reasonable to say that there is a much higher level of skepticism in institutions than in the past; I just wonder again, about how much the organization has changed and how does my perception of those things change.