Journalism Today

“Journalists stand in a paternalistic relationship to readers: They guide them rather than engage them in conversation. They decide on the legitimate and valuable topics for the agenda based on the estimation of the public’s need to know, but don’t see the necessity for listening to the public.”

I don’t think the journalist can tell the public what their news is anymore. The public can find what they want to read anywhere. They do guide readers more than engage in conversation though. Even if readers are engaging in conversation it is after they have read an above article on the internet.

“Making news became commercially viable through the selling of audiences to advertisers, instead of newspapers to partisan audiences…The new centrality of advertising income also meant that owners and editors were compelled to abandon controversial, partisan material from their reports, and instead aimed to please as many advertisers ad consumers as they possibly could by printing ostensibly “neutral” content and proclaiming their political independence.”

I think this is very true and very bad for newspapers. Advertisers are the ones controlling everything. The advertisers pay for ads in newspapers that the most people are going to read, and the newspapers think that most people are going to read a newspaper that doesn’t have an opinion. I think news needs an opinion. News needs to question things. Some is always going to be shocked or angry over a certain news view and that’s the way it should be. The quality of the news is hurt by the neutral viewpoint.