Over the last few days I have seen several articles on where the news comes from. Mostly the articles talk about the information that we, as consumers, receive. The following article "Where the news comes from--and why it matters" is from the pew research website. http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1357/newspaper-remain-main-watchdog-and-source-of-news?src=prc-latest&proj=pej
The article says that newspaper reporters are the largest gathers of news, and television and radio mostly use that same information in some form. It went on to say that while newspaper print consumption has declined online readership has increased by 15.8 percent. The news is not going away it is shifting to online outlets.
This information got me thinking about the current recession. Many newspapers have downsized and reporters have been laid off. This would leave a smaller group of people to gather the news. I think that could make bias in the news coverage larger.
The shift to online news consumption opens up a whole new area for bias. On an average day someone logs online to check their email. When the homepage pulls up they read through the major headlines. One of the headlines catch their attention and after a quick google search they have a listing of websites relating to the topic. The information on these websites could be true, false or some were in the middle but the consumer still have many resources at their finger tips.
Journalism is a career. People spend many years studying and building up resouces for this career. They have learned about the responsibillities that come with reporting and the importance of resposible journalism and checking your sources. On the other hand the internet is open to any one with a computer. People mislead others online everyday. My point is the media's shift from print to online is a complicated move. While it is convenient to the consumer there is a great oportunity to diminish trust of the media. On the other hand there are legitimate independant reports online. These independant sites often don't have editors cutting stories becasue they are worried about offending people. They write about what they are passionate about.
These changes are huge. We all know that the change is here, but will it lower the quality of our news or raise it? Also could these changes in the media be partially to blame for the peoples loss of trust in the government?
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Unfortunately, the surge in internet use seems to correlate with the the decline of the newspaper. Even though the newspaper industry claims to put more emphasis on objectivity and the internet news seems to be very biased, but there is no evidence that the public is more polarized now than years ago. I personally can't stand print media and would rather get the specific news I need off the internet than flip through pages of news, advertisement and memorials. Change in the media source does not mean that the internet news is less objective also, because newspapers have their bias, which reflects through their opinion journals. I think that most people now visit websites to get news that reinforce their beliefs, just as people usually read opinion journals in the newspapers that also reinforced their ideology in the past.
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