Social Media Undermines Good Journalism
Having spent a year as one of our Journalist Leaders, Year 11 Isabel H aired her views on this hot topic as part of her public speaking audition for the Chrystall Carter Public Speaking Prize.
It was once said by a journalist “One side says it’s raining and the other side says it is not raining. Our job is to look out the window.” I will discuss what is journalism, what is good journalism, and argue that it can be undermined by social media, but has a responsibility to push back and stand up for its values.
The Collins dictionary describes journalism as ‘the job of collecting news and writing about it for newspapers, magazines, television, or radio’. Good journalism is subjective and therefore harder to define. I have considered some important characteristics of good journalism which should be: factual, well-researched, fair, balanced, not sensationalist and with reliable sources of information. For example, the post office IT scandal has been extensively documented by Nick Wallis since 2010, and was instrumental in bringing this to the public’s attention years before the ITV documentary.
Traditional media has not always been without fault. An example is the widespread hacking of celebrities’ phones by tabloid newspapers. Other countries have state sponsored media whereby the political imperative overrides objective reporting, such as the Russian state news reporting on the invasion of Ukraine.
However, traditional media in the UK tend to uphold the standards of good journalism. The BBC reports to the government and other media organisations and broadcasters have a code of conduct and professional standards to which the journalists expect to be held accountable.
Having described good journalism, is it the case that social media undermines it? Social media has a huge reach but it has no filter. This means that everyone has a voice whether or not they adhere to the standards of journalism. Everyone is entitled to an opinion and to free speech however the voicing of extreme opinions or factually incorrect information whether unwitting or deliberate, can undermine good journalism and have a significant, and even deadly effect. This happened repeatedly during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Research by Marianna Spring, the BBC’s first disinformation specialist and social media correspondent, has highlighted that social media platforms reward repeated sharing of material that is often quote unquote ‘unfounded, false, and faked’, including election misinformation, AI-generated images and unfounded conspiracy theories. An X user who posts AI generated images about the recent US election says that the ‘controversial’ content gets the most views and attention.
In summary, the role of journalism is to report what is there, not what people want to hear. Journalists must find ways to engage audiences to counter misinformation and social media algorithms.
