Journalism Technologies – Blog Post One
1) What are the three most important core values you think journalists must have in today’s world? Why?
Accuracy – In an industry that works around and disseminates facts as one of its main roles, getting the facts right is imperative. Not only can producing an inaccurate story be harmful to the people it deals with, it can also damage the reputation of you as a professional journalist and the company you work for. Getting the facts right is so important for everyone involved so you are able to gain trust and credibility from your audience.
Impartiality – Another core value a journalist must have is the ability to recognise that there is always two sides to every story, sometimes even more. You can always find more opinions, ideas and facts from using more sources to make the story more whole and a story is not complete without acknowledging all these sides.
Humanity – Recognising that the words you use and the photos you choose to publish can be harmful to people. You are publishing stories for the humans of this world and about the humans of this world, so a journalist should be mindful and appreciate the emotions. It should be a journalist’s priority to protect people and do no harm. Within this value of humanity it is important that we use our voice not to engage in hate speeches but rather produce balanced, ethical work.
2) How can those values be useful in approaching digital tools we have today to produce good journalism?
In a society where social media and our online world demands the need for fast and readily available information, now is more important that ever to get the facts right. As a journalist, we can use the digital tools of social media and all of its platforms to our advantage to publish this accurate information that is so desired. Twitter and Facebook are great examples of how information is able to reach big numbers of people in a small space of time. However, it is important to remember that even though these sites are online platforms, the people you are communicating to are still humans with emotions and feelings, so the core value of humanity needs to be implemented. When a modern journalist knows when anything is posted on a digital format it can be found and traced forever, it really emphasises the importance of creating accurate and balanced work, that takes human emotions into consideration.
By Bonnie Barkmeyer.
