The Importance of Media Censorship and Filtering out Bad Journalism

In today’s society, it’s important to stay informed with current events in order to make informed thoughts and decisions we make every day, but as we move forward and our sources increasing, society must continue to press our sources to be honest, With the technology that currently exists, it‘s now possible to find facets of information that fits our beliefs and lifestyles. For example, many people like to read about current events on sites like Facebook or twitter, and people that follow politics might rely on companies like Fox News or a smaller online following like The Young Turks for the latest on the current events in Washington However amazing this may be, many skeptics suggest that in picking a “favorite” media outlet limits your overall perspective, and go as far to say that media outlets try to control us and create bias along the ways This is why i believe it’s important to teach our children, and culture in general, to look at things through the lens of a skeptic instead of taking everything we see at face value One of the key issues skeptics say we have moving into a new age of journalism is a quickly eroding journalism standard University of California Journalism professor Cynthia Gorney said in an interview “With journalism you have to want to get it right.

“Getting it right has to matter to you so much that, if you're going to lie awake at night worrying, getting it right is what you worry about" (Price).

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One of the cultural differences that affect the want to “get it right” that has been changed for the worst, as critics believe, is with the internet, journalism and gossip are now viewed in the same context Traditionally, if a news agency reported something that had little truths, they risked causing damage to their reputation, but some journalists question the need for ethics in journalism at all. Skeptics believe that with journalism standards eroding, the problem of bias in the media has evolved. While media bias isn‘t necessarily new, critics believe that in the internet age it has become a rampant problem “The hostile media perception (HMP) occurs when partisans of opposing sides of a social conflict judge seemingly neutral news coverage of the conflict as biased against their point of View” (Tsfati) This has been answered with news outlets that cater to one’s particular bias.

This lead’s people to discredit news and different ideas based more on where it originated from instead of the stories and evidence itself. Proponents for this kind of new age journalism believe that journalism isn‘t degrading, but rather people for the first time get to truly choose where their news comes from and he believes that journalist are just adapting to this new style “If you want to attract an audience in the competitive, online information market, I think you need to choose some values to believe in, and to express them, defend them and practice them before your audience Readers know that they have more choices [and] want to know whose side you are on”(Price). People also believe that allowing anyone with a keyboard or a phone to be in on journalism has been effective in stopping propaganda. Supporters believe in countries like Egypt and Libya, where heavy censorship of the media has long existed, that online journalism and social networking has helped liberate their people.

By being able to report and post stories anonymously, those citizens were able to lift the veil on government oppression and eventually sparked civil wars and revolutions in deeply oppressed cultures, The overall significance of having this level of access to the press has shown to help counterbalance and even topple areas where people couldn’t find their voice, Overall, I think moving into the future, the solution is simple, and people must become better at filtering out bad journalism. Just as people in Libya rebelled against their dictator Gaddafi recently, people in our culture no longer accept entertainment imprisoning people for small-time drug offenses. While society remains critical of “Facebook journalism” and things of that nature, we have starting to become distrusting of larger news groups that have been using bias to polarize and sensationalize stories, and using social media fact check and peer review the many article that get put in front us on a daily basis.

Moving into the future, although the traditional rules of journalism will more than likely die down, I think that the overall accuracy of the stories we see will increase. As individuals become more skilled at filtering through trash and finding truths in what they see, most people will feel compelled to share what they believe is true So long as we as society take the time to fact check what doesn’t appear to be true, media bias will struggle to thrive, and will only exist as a group’s opinion and not as a tool to try to control or influence society, So while traditional journalism may in fact be dead, perhaps what’s slowly taking its place has the potential to be much more useful than what was.

Works Cited

1. PRICE, TOM. "Journalism Standards In The Internet Age: THE ISSUES." CQ Researcher 2035 (2010): 823‘ Web. 8Apr. 2016i
2. Torn Price interviews and discusses the shift of journalistic standards with several different academic professionals and analyzes data from the Pew research center to observe shifts