The urge to resist the ‘temptation for the sensational’ is a struggle many journalists face in the current media environment. Click-bait and ad-driven outlets focus on algorithm-based stories. So, what should journalists do when faced with this conundrum?
Award-winning journalist, Dominic Ponsford of New Statesman Global Media, Press Gazette and the British Journalism Awards, provided a glimpse of the news industry today and how to navigate it in the third event of BSIS’s Politics, Power and Persuasion series. The role of the media is not to be taken lightly. Journalists have an immense power, as Ponsford highlighted. They decide who can have a voice and which events to spotlight. As gatekeepers, they have an obligation to show the public what is happening in a way that is balanced, fair and accurate.
However, good journalism is often replaced by stories that are driven by an echo chamber created by today’s algorithms. Journalists must then take a difficult decision: how to compete with fake news with unverified sources that travels fast? Big tech has made it easier for these to disseminate, thus the internet is flooded with pieces that harm the reputation of the industry.
This then poses another question: how can we identify good journalism?
Ponsford enumerated a few ways to help us identify a good piece:
- A good story is not one-sided. It should feature comment from differing parties with alternative interests and agendas to ensure it presents a balanced picture.
- It is evidence-based (but not too much to make it boring!) Examples of this include survey data, research from reports and case studies from individuals affected by the issue.
- It has reliable sources. There is a tendency in some sections of the media to lift tweets from Twitter accounts belonging to people with just a few followers or who may not even be real people. Or they will invite comments from ordinary members of the public or in some cases will not name the source at all. The more professional an individual is who is being quoted, the more reliable they are likely to be as sources of trustworthy information.
- Good journalism appeals to the emotions but is not sensationalist. One way to assess this is to look out for over-use of adjectives such as ‘shocking’ or ‘tragic’ which suggest the piece has been written in a style that intends to deliberately provoke extreme reactions from readers.
- Is the piece relevant? Does it contain new information? Does it advance a national debate in some way?
The event concluded with a comparison between the UK and the US’ media environments and how the perception and the role of the media has changed throughout the last few years given the growing hostile relationship between some elected officials and news outlets. One thing is for sure though; journalism is not dying and a journalist’s mission to inform the public has never been more salient.
The next Politics, Power and Persuasion event – Post-post-truth: what next for disinformation after Trump – takes place on Tuesday 23 March at 19.30 CET.
Register for your place here.