30-Aug-20

WEEK 1: Overview of Journalism

What is journalism?
 Journalism is the activity of
Gathering
Assessing
Creating
Presenting news and information.
 Journalism is also the product of these
activities.
 Journalism can be distinguished from
other activities and products by certain
identifiable characteristics and practices.

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What is journalism?

 These elements not only separate

journalism from other forms of
communication, they are what make it
indispensable to democratic societies.

 History reveals that the more

democratic a society, the more news
and information it tends to have.

What makes journalism different than

other forms of communication?
 The world, and especially the online world, is awash
in communication.

 The vast majority of this communication, however, is

news??? And especially journalism???

E.g. Almost 70% of email traffic is spam,

according to web security company Symantec.

E.g. In 2012, there were an average of 175

million tweets each day. But almost all – 99% —
consisted of “pointless babble,” according to
researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.

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What makes journalism different than

other forms of communication?
Journalism occupies a much smaller space
than
Talk
Entertainment
Opinion
Assertion
Advertising
Propaganda that dominate the media
universe

 Journalism is perceived as being more

valuable than most of the “stuff out there.”

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What makes journalism different than

other forms of communication?

 That value flows from

its purpose to provide people with
verified information they can use to make
better decisions
its practices, most importantly a
systematic process
a discipline of verification – that
journalists use to find not just the facts, but
also the “truth about the facts.”

What is the purpose of journalism?

 Not defined by technology, journalists or the

techniques they employ
 Rather by something more basic: the function that
news plays in the lives of people.

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What is the purpose of journalism?

 News as part of communication
keeps us informed of the changing events,
issues, and characters in the world outside.
works as a utility to empower the
informed (though maybe interesting or even
entertaining)
provides citizens with the information
they need to make the best possible decisions
about their lives, their communities, their
societies, and their governments.

What does a journalist do?

 Who is a journalist? >>> wrong question
 Journalism can be produced by anyone, but
not everything produced is Journalism.

 At the same time, merely engaging in

journalistic-like activity does not by itself
produce a journalistic product.
E.g. Snapping a cell-phone picture at the
scene of a fire or creating a blog site for
news and comment

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What does a journalist do?

DYNAMISM
 Everyone has an opportunity to publish
“news”.
 The concept of what forms “news” has also
changed to what the audience takes as
newsworthy as opposed to what the
journalist and their editors feel should be
“news”.
 In today’s world, citizens ‘make’ the news.
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What does a journalist do?

 There is a distinction between the act of
journalism and the end result.
 The truth is that Journalism goes beyond
writing a story, the main core of the
profession is the principle of ethics.
 The journalist places the public good above
all else and uses certain methods – the
foundation of which is a discipline of
verification – to gather and assess what he
or she finds.

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