UN-FAKING THE NEWS
“We need to vaccinate the public with real journalism; explaining in detail how we come to a conclusion, how facts are gathered, what should be considered a fact and why – how journalism works” – Ole Reißmann
I found this call-to-action from bento’s Ole Reißmann to be a slightly utopian one. He does state that unfaking the news is “no easy task”, and he is absolutely right. Journalism is such an increasingly competitive industry, with pressure in newsrooms and all journalistic institutions as strenuous as ever. Unfortunately, a result of this and the advances of social media have meant that ‘the facts’ are sometimes not the number one priority. Instead, being on the scene first and being first to supposed ‘news’ is more important to many journalists, whether their reports be based on rumour or mere half-truths.
There is no question that there are plenty of talented journalists with greater pride for their work to inform the public, but the current media landscape means this is harder for journalism as a whole to be pure. What is becoming abundantly clear is that being last with absolutely all of the facts has taken a back seat to being first and presenting half of the facts.
Messaging Apps Go Mainstream
“Journalists, newsrooms and editors will tell stories using the language of messaging apps – stickers, emojis, gifs, vertical video.” – Samantha Barry
This is definitely beginning to happen for newsrooms, as newsrooms and such are a product to be consumed by people. Such is the demand for news and journalism that media agencies will look to take advantage of all possible platforms for their services to be produced on. Just the other day I was bewildered to see my friend watching a preview for a news story on an ABC News snapchat story.
I saw this first hand in at Triple M while writing up sports news stories. When posting articles onto Facebook, the workers there referenced the ‘sell’ (ie. the line or few words that would sell the story to a prospective reader). This sometimes would involve ‘crying laughing’ emojis if it was a light-hearted story or perhaps a ‘shocked’ emoji for surprising news.
With the growing use of social media in this modern media landscape, the ‘language of the future’ will certainly enhance in popularity.
