Journalism is going through a watershed moment right now. The 2016 U.S. election made journalists see that they have to rethink their profession. Around the world, the profession of journalism is often threatened. While the U.S. offers a lot more support, journalists are still at the mercy of vicious attacks. With the President-elect going as far as stating he would change libel laws to counter agencies that attacked him, journalists must be courageous to protect our profession.
At the same time, journalists need to put accuracy instead of speed. The emergence of the internet has been it easier and faster to access information. To keep up, however, many organizations have been too focused on the entertainment part rather than the seriousness. The phenomenon of Trump, unlike anything American reporters had previously seen, made journalists fail to see him as a serious contender. They covered him like a circus show, failing to see that the blatant coverage was countering their numerous attacks.
Journalists also need to diversify the workplace, and not just in terms of race. The journalist workplace also face a lack of representation from working class and military families, resulting in those groups being poorly underrepresented. Newsrooms are often ‘safe spaces’ of college educated middle class or higher professionals. This results in reporters often knowing nothing of the world of the working class or lower whose priorities are vastly different. This lack of representation often leads the unheard angry. With each attack on Trump, his supporters grew more and more frustrated, lifting up their urge to vote for Trump.
According to Melanchor, the eight news values of journalism are timelinessness, impact,prominence, proximity, conflict, unusual, currency and necessity. These values guide us in what exactly should be covered, though sometimes the most insignificant details can leads to much greater things. One of the biggest problems with journalism is perhaps how certain topics receive loads of coverage during a particular period (such as poverty during JFK’s presidency) and then goes back into oblivion shorty thereafter.
The Media and I 